t 



405 




ESTABLISHED 1875. 
Sg^6ET0VI»H2^i 



St 



OLD ROME 



AND 



NEW ITALY. 



OLD ROME 



AND 



NEW ITALY. 



(RECUERDOS DE ITALIA.) 



By EMILIO CASTELmC- 
w 

AUTHOR OF "THE REPUBLICAN MOVEMENT IN EUROPE," 

NOW PUBLISHING IN " HARPER'S MAGAZINE." 



TRANSLATED BY 

MRS. ARTHUR ARNOLD. 

r 




NEW YORK: 

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

1875- 



D& 



437 



B, 0. PUBLIC LIB»A»f 
SflPT. lO, 1940 



9 
O 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

ARRIVAL IN ROME 9 

THE GREAT RUIN 31 

THE ROMAN CATACOMBS 52 

THE SISTINE CHAPEL 70 

THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA 107 

VENICE . .* . . 132 

ON THE LAGUNES* 154 

THE GOD OF THE VATICAN 170 

THE GHETTO 246 

THE GREAT CITY 265 

PARTHENOPE 284 



PREFACE. 



TO THE READER. 

This book is the record of the lively emotions awakened 
in my soul by the marvelous spectacles of Italy. It is not 
a book of travels. I have not designed to add one more to 
the excellent works we already possess in Castilian upon the 
artistic nation, for these are in the hands of all travelers. 
When a people, a monument, or a landscape made a profound 
impression on my mind, I took my pen and hastened to 
communicate that feeling to my readers with all fidelity. 
I have not, then, followed any order or itinerary in my book. 
I have placed my pictures where it seemed best, so that 
they do not bear any particular relation to each other ; and I 
have sometimes returned to a town from which I seemed to 
have departed. Each picture may therefore form a sepa- 
rate work. 

In these pages there is but little of the present life and 
manners of Italy. With that nation, the longer it lives the 
more it recollects. We must look at it historically and aes- 
thetically. We must endeavor to connect its great monu- 
ments with the ages in which they were constructed, with the 
generations to which they owe their creation. In Italy, we 



v ili PREFACE. 



must before every landscape or every ruin evoke the august 
shades which realize them, and gather the living ideas dis- 
tilled from her fruitful bosom. Otherwise it is useless to 
travel there. 

In her history there is an order which is not a natural or- 
der, but a human order, like the transition from the ancient 
world to the modern world — like the passing from the Middle 
Age to the Renaissance. By those buildings so famed for 
beauty, those statues so serene and lovely, have passed all the 
tempests of the human spirit. Knowledge has opened their 
wounds } and on seeing them, one feels in heart and brain 
the immense effort it has cost ages to create the modern spirit 
in which we breathe and live. For this reason a journey to 
Italy is a journey through all periods of history. And this is 
why an essay upon Italy, rather than a description, should 
be, in my judgment, a revival. I have intended to keep al- 
ways in mind that above these great works of art, of archaeol- 
ogy, history is visible. I am happy, quite happy, if I have 
succeeded in imparting to my readers the thoughts that, so to 
speak, are exhaled from the artistic works and the historical 
recollections of immortal Italy. 

Emilio Castelar. 
Madrid. 



OLD ROME AND NEW ITALY. 



Chapter I. 

ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

At last 'we were at Civita Vecchia. As the boat rapidly 
neared the shore, our hearts bounded in our bosoms with en- 
thusiasm. The buildings and all around spoke of antiquity. 
However little inclined to classical studies, one is tempted at 
such a moment to repeat the verses which Virgil puts into the 
mouths of the companions of ^Eneas. The emotions awak- 
ened by the first sight of Italy are enduring — not transient as 
the furrow of a vessel in the ocean. I sprung joyfully to 
land, and if our prosaic age did not quarrel with outward 
manifestation of high sentiments, I would have flung myself 
on my knees and kissed the earth. Italiam^ Italiam, primus 
condamat Achates. But in my excitement I forgot I was in 
Pontifical Italy. A custom-house officer stopped us, demand- 
ing the price of admission as at a theatre. A crowd of beg- 
gars, whose statuesque features bore the sad stamp of misery, 
with loud clamors divided our luggage among them as a 
rich booty. Then the police claimed our passports, now 
abolished in all civilized Europe ; exacting another govern- 

A ? 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 



merit duty, although they had been previously vised and taxed 
by the Nuncio in Paris and at the Consulate in Marseilles. 

Following our baggage, we entered a wretched store-house, 
dark as a dungeon of the Inquisition ; an obscurity incom- 
prehensible in this land of resplendent heavens and dazzling 
light, which gives to the eyes a feast of colors, and fills the 
mind with poetic rapture. For articles worn, or intended to 
be worn, custom-house dues were exacted. When these were 
paid, and we fancied we were free to move, all our effects 
were placed in a cart drawn by a number of ragged and 
shirtless lads, who cried, " To the custom-house !" A second 
time ? These taxes and tariffs, this want of intercourse with 
the world — are these also of divine right ? Is it essential to 
the exercise of the Pope's authority over consciences that he 
should incline to the economic errors of prohibition and the 
political errors of absolutism ? 

I compared this entrance into the Pontifical States with 
my arrival in the Swiss Cantons. Certainly, sentiments not 
less sublime are awakened at beholding those mountains 
crowned with eternal snows ; those dark and shady groves 
beside which stretch meadows of tender green enameled with 
flowers \ those azure lakes sleeping at the foot of gentle 
slopes, contrasting with hoary peaks half-veiled by clouds ; 
those impetuous torrents of crystal waters ; those villages 
peopled by a vigorous and hardy race, which realizes the 
greatest happiness known to human society — the union of 
liberty and democracy. Nothing disturbs the traveler in the 
contemplation of this grandeur. No policeman demands his 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 



name, no custom-house official searches his baggage. These 
mountains seem like impenetrable barriers, but liberty has 
thrown them open to the world, while on the Roman shore 
— those coasts which look so gentle and tranquil — absolutism 
has placed a cloud of spies and tax-gatherers, to inclose the 
country which nature has opened to all nations and to every 
breath of Heaven. 

Nothing is more inconvenient than the registration of lug- 
gage; nothing more tormenting and ridiculous. On books, 
especially, custom-house officers fall with inquisitorial eager- 
ness. And after having tossed about and examined every 
thing, they send the traveler's effects to the station, demand- 
ing another tax, which last forced contribution is equal to the 
first. Who can patiently endure such an administration? 
Is it possible that there exists in central Europe a beautiful 
and classic country, more remarkable for its glorious past 
than any other, under such injudicious and ruinous guardian- 
ship? Will not the Holy Spirit, which pours forth torrents 
of religious truth on the Church of St. Peter — will it not in 
mercy shed a few drops of political truth and economy, at 
once the happiness and riches of modern peoples ? The soul 
shrinks from all that is administrative, to turn to the lovely 
and picturesque in this land of song and flowers. The 
heavens and the sea are of brilliant azure, the air mild and 
aromatic ; the rocks which bind the coast are gilded and em- 
browned by the sun ; on the trees the tender leaves come 
forth to meet the soft kisses of April ; and among groups of 
merry and half-clothed children every now and then mingle 



I2 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

the white tunics and gray serge robes of friars, looking like 
the living ruins of other ages, and moving like the ignis fatu- 
us over the crumbling monuments of antiquity. 

The hour of departure strikes. The whistle sounds. Ci- 
vita Vecchia is the port of the Roman States ; but there are 
no carts, nor barrels, nor burdens, nor laborers — nothing in- 
dicative of commercial existence except the custom-house 
officials placed there to obstruct it. I had often heard of the 
dreariness of the Roman Campagna, but I had not imagined 
its reality. Death seems to have swallowed even the ruins. 
Ravens and vultures have eaten even the bones of this huge 
corpse. There are eleven stations between the sea and the 
Eternal City, but no town near any of them. The officials 
call out the names, such as Rio Fiume or Magliana ; sounds 
lost in distant echoes in the immensity of the desert. It is 
very strange to see a train in solitude, no one mounting or 
descending, no one looking on, no one loading or unloading. 
A circular hovel, surmounted by a wooden cross, is dignified 
by the name of "the station." They look like the tombs of 
savages. The train moves as slowly as a cart, so there is 
ample time to observe the immense horizon, the desolate 
plain, the vast marshes, some frightened horses and buffa- 
loes, a few shepherds on worn-out ponies, or a cart with a 
poor fever-stricken family — the remains of a nomade race, 
dying in the desert where so many majestic remains of antiq- 
uity have fallen and are buried. 

Economic errors are to be found in all ages and even amid 
much civilization. When Cincinnatus cultivated the Roman 



ARRIVAL IN ROME, I3 

plains in the early days of the Republic, they might have been 
called the earthly Elysian Fields ; a plantation of riches, an 
abode of happiness and abundance. Wine, corn, oil, milk, 
and honey were produced in such quantities by agricultural 
labor that Rome was sufficient for herself. But by degrees 
the great families took possession of the ground once owned 
and tilled by many. In order to avoid daily labor they con- 
verted agricultural land into pasturage. One slave was 
enough to guard the flock. Irrigation was suspended ; the 
canals dried up, drainage was stopped. Water became stag- 
nant in low places ; those streams which had brought life in 
their flow, scattered death by their putrid emanations. Hav- 
ing conquered the known world, the Roman people were no 
longer employed with war and had forgotten the occupations 
of peace. The want of food and pleasure opened the way for 
despotism. From despotism came the moral death which is 
in tyranny, as material death is in the Pontine marshes. 
Well did Pliny say — Latifundia Italiam perdidere. 

At last, at the fall of evening, when shadows hung over 
Rome, we arrived in the Eternal City ; that city which gave 
us jurisprudence with her praetors, liberty with her tribunes, 
authority with her Caesars, religion with her priests : that city 
on which the annals of the human race are written ; the tomb 
of antiquity; the triumphal arch through which the modern 
ages have been ushered ; the temple to which generations of 
Catholics have come for fifteen centuries, seeking spiritual 
light ; the great school in which artists learn before thousands 
of statues and columns the secrets of the chisel \ the battle- 



14 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 



field on which lie buried the gods of ancient theologies, 
brought to the Pantheon on cars of triumph ; the city the 
most august and most powerful that has ever existed on the 
earth ; that which still directs the conscience of a part of the 
human family by the prestige of its history, by the mysteries 
which arise from its majestic ruins. I am penetrated with a 
deep sentiment of veneration toward this city, unique in the 
world. Babylon, Tyre, Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria, have 
reigned in ancient story at different intervals and at certain 
periods, realizing each one its idea \ then it has disappeared 
in the dust of its ruins, without other trace than the records 
of its existence, or the bones of its children in the earth. 
Paris, London, and New York will be great in history ; but 
this Rome, which the ancients justly called Eternal, belongs 
to both hemispheres of times — the heathen and the Christian 
world. 

With what emotions Rome inspires the traveler ! He may 
be strictly Catholic ; the impressions of his early education 
may remain unsullied, but at beholding these statues of an- 
tiquity, these fauns with their immortal smile, these goddesses 
in whose marble flesh appears to circulate the warmth of life 
and the blood of unfading youth ; before that choir of Greek 
divinities in their dignified repose and Olympic serenity ; in 
the wondrous harmony of outline and the splendid beauty of 
expression \ the vitality which hangs on those lips almost vi- 
brating with the hymn of classic poesy ; — before those forms 
of stone, more animated and intelligent than their living guard- 
ians, he is overcome with sorrow for the death of art, and led 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. I5 

to wish the temples of antiquity could rise from their ruins and 
continue their songs and sacrifices, the eloquent pages of 
Plato or the glowing words of Demosthenes, in the midst of 
that world of deities which pour upon the earth from cups of 
amber the nectar of eternal joy. 

Goethe experienced this profound classical enthusiasm in 
the Museum of the Vatican : the abode of Catholic Pontiffs, 
by a miracle of art, has been converted into the Olympus of 
the heathen divinities ! 

Thus it happens in the Christian world. The great Basili- 
cas, notwithstanding their colossal majesty, chill the warmth 
of our devotion. Those monuments of bronze and marble, 
sparkling with gold and jewels, bathed in light, and rich in 
mosaics and bass-reliefs, dazzle, but do not affect us. The 
coldness of marble touches the soul. But on entering, for ex- 
ample, the Catacombs of St. Clement \ on seeing the damp 
earth which preserved for four centuries the seed of Christian- 
ity - on beholding by torchlight, in these subterraneous in- 
scriptions traced by the hands of martyrs, the symbols of hope 
in the midst of the terrors of persecution, we hear in imagina- 
tion the hymns of catechumens beneath the feasts of the 
Caesars, ascending to the circus where ferocious beasts await 
their prey — and the sentiment of loving admiration inspired 
by all great sacrifices overcomes us by its sublime mystery, 
leading us to contemplate on our knees the secrets of eternity, 
and to desire the sleep of death in the sepulchre illuminated 
by the faith of the first Christians. How these emotions are 
stifled at sight of the Pontifical Court ! I can not resist the 



16 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

temptation of repeating an anecdote from the most accom- 
plished of Italian writers, Boccaccio : 

a An old Florentine Christian took much pains to win souls 
to heaven, in order to secure his own eternal happiness ; at 
length he met with one, either Jew or Mohammedan — I forget 
which — and endeavoring to open the eyes of his soul to di- 
vine light, succeeded so well that in a few days he was half 
converted. The idea of going to Rome then occurred to the 
infidel ; a notion which much disconcerted the missionary, for 
he feared the licentiousness of that court would reduce his 
great work to ashes. What was his astonishment when the 
catechumen returned with feelings of gall toward his ancient 
faith and of honey toward the new, exclaiming, 'My father! I 
am quite converted ; for if, notwithstanding the profligacy of 
the clergy, the Church exists, grows, and prospers, it is doubt- 
less because, being the depositary of truth, it deserves the di- 
rect protection of Heaven !' " 

I will not accuse the court which surrounds Pius IX. of 
licentiousness. I am not accustomed to speak without proof, 
and am always inclined to believe more good than evil of 
human nature. I believe Pius IX. to be venerable from his 
age and perfect morality. I suppose that the example of his 
unsullied character influences his whole court. But I say 
that neither he nor his followers comprehend the free, reason- 
ing, and independent spirit of this age — perhaps too positive 
— which demands a pure and disinterested worship, in op- 
position to materialism ; and which can never have that de- 
sire satisfied by the vain and pompous luxury with which the 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. I? 

Roman Court adorns religious ceremonies, changing them 
into the worship of sense. To which side do the errors of 
this generation incline ? To that of industry and commerce. 
The marvels of modern progress have made us forget the 
sentiments hidden in the depths of the soul ! 

The exclusively luxurious tendency of its character may 
produce one of those idealistic reactions which mark the 
progress of the human race, as the sensuality of the Roman 
Empire operating on the conscience brought the too spiritual 
reaction of Christianity, and converted a world of epicureans 
into a world of monks. The ancient religion of the spirit 
may well experience a conscientious crisis in order to recover 
some part of the moral influence it has lost. But with this 
system of unrestrained luxury ; of strangely dressed courtiers 
and pages clad in gold ; of cardinals attired in purple and 
ermine ; of bishops with Oriental mitres ; of Swiss, who re- 
semble harlequins ; of noble body-guards, who throw black 
velvet mantles on their shoulders and wear silver swords by 
their sides ; of servants clothed in all the hues of the rain- 
bow ; of lackeys, whose finery challenges the painted parrots 
of the tropics ; of soldiers with uniforms like that of General 
Boom in the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein — with all this East- 
ern ostentation the Papal Court wanders from Christ and ap- 
proaches Heliogabalus. 

It is Palm Sunday. The great Basilica of St. Peter is going 
to bestow the benediction of Palms. Behind in the church 
the people are crushed together, as if they had not received 
with baptism the seal of Christian equality. From the grand 



jg ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

altar to the great door are two lines of soldiers to prevent the 
multitude from pressing on the Pope. Although the assem- 
blage is most numerous, it does not fill the immense space ; 
for St. Peter's could contain sixty thousand souls. The words 
of military command resound loudly in the temple, where the 
voice of prayer should alone be audible. The butts of the 
fire-arms fall noisily on the marble pavement. Those present 
are strangers. The Roman citizen has almost disappeared in 
the inundation of foreigners called by the Pope to his succor. 
At the time fixed, the procession bringing Pius IX. appears. 
It is impossible for any one to give an idea of the different 
dresses worn by his retinue. To do so would necessitate a 
masquerading nomenclature like that of Bizancio. At length, 
after an army of courtiers, comes the Pope, seated on a gilded 
throne, and borne like the saints in our processions, wearing 
a robe of crimson velvet and a white mitre, his left hand hold- 
ing the golden crosier, his right uplifted in benediction to 
those who implore it kneeling. St. Peter's appears a theatre. 
The stalls, raised on steps under the vast arches which sup- 
port the wondrous dome of Michael Angelo, are occupied by 
ladies. The arrangement of these religious seats seems the 
same as that of the central area of the Grand Opera of Paris. 
Gentlemen whose costume is strictly en regie occupy the 
places below 7 the stalls. 

During the Mass, some talk, others walk about, and all oc- 
casionally use opera-glasses, sometimes turned on the ladies 
in the stalls, sometimes directed toward the cardinals. The 
noble guards — dressed like our cavaliers of the Court of Philip 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. Ig 

IV., with trunk hose and silk stockings, short velvet jackets, 
the sleeves slashed and adorned with ellipses of satin; the 
mantle on the shoulder ; the dagger with hilt of steel before ; 
the black head-gear under the arm, and the white collar on 
the neck — join in the general conversation and mingle in the 
general promenade. The Swiss only are immovable. It is 
pitiful to reflect that they have been so weak-minded as to 
forsake the liberty of their native mountains to serve — poor 
mercenaries! — a foreign sovereign. Their costume was de- 
signed by Raphael, and in this the great painter did not prove 
himself a master of color — it is a mixture of strips of black, 
red, and yellow cloth; a helmet ornamented with a white 
feather covers the head, and each bears an elegant battle-axe. 
They look like lay figures dressed as harlequins. 

After the conclusion of the function I went into the piazza 
or square of St. Peter. It was occupied by an immense mul- 
titude. Luxurious coaches traversed it in all directions, mil- 
itary bands performed warlike airs. The decoration of this 
piazza is admirable : in the centre the great obelisk, mute 
trophy of the victories of the Roman people in Egypt; at 
either side are fountains, which cast upward jets of sparkling 
water; to the right and left, intercolumniations open in colos- 
sal semicircles, half exposing the lovely southern vegetation 
of the adjoining gardens, and terminated by a magnificent 
diadem of statuary. On a height stands the Vatican, a 
palace which bears testimony to the genius of the first artists 
in the world ; and below, at the end of an elegant flight of steps, 
the Church of St. Peter, crowned by the dome of Michael An- 



20 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

gelo,who designed it grandly as an aerial temple ascending to- 
the infinite, among the rosy clouds of that glorious heaven 
which extends over all, as a magic gauze of incomparable 
beauty, its mantle of golden light. 

I must not forget to make an observation inspired by the 
festival. This city can not, notwithstanding so much splen- 
dor, perpetuate enchantment with the philtre of mysticism, 
nor ensnare in the nets of artifice. When Religion held in 
her hands arts, science, and politics, such a society was nat- 
urally governed by sacerdotal bodies. But from the time 
that all social employments became laic, a theocratic govern- 
ment became impossible. I noticed that the choirs of the 
Sistine Chapel have greatly degenerated. The sublime in- 
spirations of Palestrina can scarcely find worthy interpreters. 
This falling off is explained by the difficulty which exists in 
our time of finding such singers as are required by the Papal 
Court. It is known that women are not allowed to sing in 
the choir of St. Peter, and for trebles they have recourse to 
boys from infancy reduced to the condition of those unfortu- 
nates who guard Eastern harems. Alexander Dumas says, 
in one of his books of travels, that he saw over the shop of 
a Roman barber the following announcement : " Here boys 
are perfected." I never saw any thing of this kind ; but I 
know that the choirs decay, for there are now no families so 
despicable as thus to sacrifice their sons for money. And it 
is no longer possible that in order to support a religious 
and moral authority there should exist a city without a press, 
without a tribune, without the first rights constituting the 
personal protection of the people. 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 



The internal tempest which rages in Rome is at once vis- 
ible to the stranger. There are three thousand emigrants in 
a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants. Four hundred 
persons are now in prison for political offenses ; and a priest 
of high position, an intimate friend of the Pope, and even 
an enthusiast for the temporal power, has assured me that 
Rome contains more than seventy thousand Garibaldians. 
Every thing indicates uneasiness. The city gates are defend- 
ed by barricades. At nine o'clock in the evening all shrink 
behind their walls — and that in an age when other towns 
open their gates to welcome light and air, new ideas and new 
sciences — the products of every clime and the representa- 
tives of every race and nation. 

At nightfall you meet guards at every corner, as in a be- 
sieged city. Passports are registered with astonishing mi- 
nuteness. A State which scarce contains six hundred thou- 
sand souls keeps up a standing army of twenty thousand ! 

These twenty thousand men are of different nations and 
speak different languages. The greater number do not un- 
derstand Italian. Thus the ties of blood and of language 
exist not among them, although they are bound together by 
the same religion and the same political sentiments. This is 
a serious inconvenience with regard to their manoeuvres. 
French, as the language most generally understood, is used 
in the army ; but it is unintelligible to the greater number of 
the private soldiers. In fact, to be able to live in Rome 
(not being born in the country) one must possess a mind of 
uncommon elevation — a soul capable of understanding her 



22 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

arts, her ruins, and her monuments. Those who are unable 
to hear the eloquent voices which awaken so many lofty 
ideas and inspirations, soon weary of this academical and 
monastic city. I do not speak idly ; but having closely ob- 
served the Pontifical forces, I declare that I found an ele- 
gance, a refinement, and a distinction of manners one would 
seek vainly in any other European army. It is well known 
that if a great part of it is mercenary, or has been entrapped 
into the service, most of it is composed of high-spirited and 
romantic youths — with a chivalrous worship for old institu- 
tions, exalted in their opinions and tastes, some of them hav- 
ing lost their illusions, but all more or less eccentric and sen- 
timental — seeking the exercise of arms and the turmoil of 
camps as food for that mysticism which formerly a more 
gentle and more religious generation sought in the silence of 
the cloister and the mortification of penance. These sol- 
diers have come from the four points of the horizon ; they 
belong to all Christian races, and speak all languages ; so 
Rome maintains under the Popes the character of universality 
bestowed on her by the Caesars. But this, which is a moral 
excellence, is a material disadvantage to the army. The no- 
tion of individuality, which the Germans have brought into 
modern history, is so deep-rooted that differences of race, of 
nationality, and of character continually show themselves in 
the ranks, and occasion innumerable conflicts. As the offi- 
cers speak one language and the subordinates another, friend- 
ly relations scarcely exist among them, though these are even 
more necessary than discipline in times of danger. As the 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 2 ^ 



soldiers do not understand each other, there is no unity in 
their body ; and from this the greatest difficulties arise, and 
the chiefs are obliged to struggle through them in directing 
the manoeuvres. Catholic Rome chose Pagan Latin that all 
her children should have one spirit and one language. But 
the difference of pronunciation was so great that, though all 
spoke Latin, the monks of different nations did not under- 
stand each other, thus demonstrating the superiority of nature 
over law. Political Rome in our age has in her affliction 
selected the elegant and ductile language of Voltaire in ad- 
dressing her soldiers — that language fatal to all idols and 
idolatries. The aristocracy of the Roman army understand 
it, but not the rank and file. And the troops are discontent- 
ed, on account of the fatigue and difficulty of the manoeuvres 
and the continual mounting guard to which they are com- 
pelled by the growing anxieties of the Papal Court. 

Those nations which from their past history should send 
most soldiers, send fewest in proportion to their population. 
Spain destroyed herself to save Catholicism. Since the fif- 
teenth century the bones of her children have whitened every 
battle-field where she found it necessary to defend her relig- 
ion. She gave for it all the blood in her veins, and all the 
vitality of her spirit. But there are only thirty-eight Spanish 
soldiers in the Pontifical army. On the other hand, Holland, 
which protected the Reformation by its Princes of Orange, 
and introduced liberty of religious opinion into the modern 
world, has sent a great number of volunteers. This proves 
that while the freedom of worship has kept alive the Catholic 



24 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 



faith in Protestant countries, intolerance has extinguished it 
in those places where it was most sincere and most exalted. 

But leaving these reflections and returning to political 
questions, I can not understand what the Pope proposes to do 
with this numerous army, so disproportioned to his means, to 
his resources, and to his State. The shadow of the French 
Empire protects him. The day in which that shadow is with- 
drawn, no matter how valiant the Papal army, it will not be 
able to resist a hundred thousand Italian soldiers. While the 
French protection endures, the Pontifical army is useless; 
and without French protection the Pontifical army would be 
insufficient. It serves only to consume the succor which is 
sent to the Pontiff with full and lavish hands from all Catholic 
nations. But all this comes now from an exaltation of senti- 
ment that can not continue. When Italy shall be convinced 
of her inability to struggle with Napoleon, or to promote the 
Franco-Prussian war with regard to the Roman question, the 
zeal of the faithful will diminish, the resources will fall away, 
and the army be speedily reduced. Then an insurrection will 
be not only possible, but easy ; for the people still preserve 
the love of liberty. 

It is wonderful what force and intelligence still remain in 
the physiognomy of these Romans, revealing all the indom- 
itable pride of that ancient character which conquered the 
known world. The women are tall and majestic, with well- 
turned shoulders. Their complexion is pale brown, the lips 
full, the nose aquiline; black and brilliant eyes, made more 
beautiful by long lashes and artistic brows, a statuesque fore- 



ARRIVAL IN ROME, 2 S 

head, and head like the Madonnas of the divine Raphael; 
dark and curling hair falls in large masses on sculptured 
necks — they have the manner of Roman matrons such as 
commanded Coriolanus to die for his country, or Caius Grac- 
chus to sacrifice himself for the people. The Roman youths 
inherit the beauty of their mothers, combined with manly vig- 
or. The silence imposed by the Inquisition and the obedi- 
ence exacted by despotism have not extinguished the spirit of 
this great people. The formula of ancient liberty yet trembles 
on their lips — Civis Romanus sum / 

Side by side we see the Oriental luxury of the cardinals 
and the rags of a starving populace ; here a gilded coach, 
and there a crowd of shoeless beggars ; close to magnificent 
palaces of marble there are heaps of refuse, emitting horrible 
effluvia. And yet this city is the capital of Italy. At the fall 
of evening, in the sacred hour of poetic silence, under the pure 
heavens, glorified by the last rays of the setting sun, which 
give an air of mysticism to all around ; from the height of the 
Pincio look on this city, with its eleven Egyptian obelisks, 
its three hundred cupolas, its groves of columns, its myriads 
of statues, and you see the seven hills from whence have 
sprung senators, consuls, and tribunes ; the political and civil 
rights of antiquity, now the bases of our rights ; contemplate 
the fagade of St. Peter's, the Great Basilica surmounted by the 
dome foretold by Bramante and executed by Michael Angelo; 
the Titanic mausoleum of Adrian, over which are extended 
the wings of the brazen seraphim ; there, to the left, the world 
of history, the walls on which are engraved a thousand victo- 

B 



26 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

ries, the Via Sacra where conquerors entered, the Forum, 
where the people gathered ; those arches which twenty centu- 
ries have passed without destroying ; those refreshing baths, 
copied so often by modern artists ; the Coliseum, that mount- 
ain sculptured by Titanic chisels ; the Quirinal, which contains 
the finest statues saved from the wreck of Greece ; the Capi- 
tol, head and cerebrum of the world. At the sight of so many 
marvels, at the recollection of so much grandeur, at the con- 
templation of such monuments, framed in groves of cypress, 
like a funereal wreath placed by an invisible deity ; at the soft 
music of bells which invite to vespers, like the voices of mar- 
tyrs ascending from the Catacombs ; the shadows of evening 
lingering sadly over the ruins, like the spirits of departed he- 
roes — the heart, swelled by emotions, confesses that Rome is 
not only the capital of Italy, but the eternal centre of the 
world ! 

One must be Italian, must feel Southern blood in his veins, 
must have been educated in this glorious history under the 
painted wings of classic poetry, to comprehend all the influ- 
ence which Rome exercises over the Italians. Those who 
desired to make Italy a monarchy, and afterward denied her 
the capital which is hers by nature, did but construct a head- 
less body. It is easy to see that if Italy was a republican fed- 
eration, the question of capital would be secondary. One can 
also understand that being a State adjoining other republican 
States, however analogous were the laws to those of Italy, it 
would preserve Rome, from respect to the Popes, to the nuns 
and the monastic character of the city; in the same way that 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 2 y 

Freiburg has been kept, although it is between two Protestant 
and Liberal cantons like those of Vaud and Berne. But Italy 
having been constituted a monarchy from the natural aversion 
all European potentates have for republics, Rome is of Italy 
and Italy is of Rome, bound as the satellites to their planets 
and the planets to the sun. And in this city, now composed 
of churches and convents, where no trace of civil or political 
life is perceptible, where for all laic authority we see a few 
senators in painted coaches, followed by gaudily dressed 
lackeys (absurd parody on the ancient senators), this theo- 
cratic and monastic Rome, always kneeling on her marble 
ruins, must erect the tribune and the Forum, must allow lib- 
erty to the press, must call forth the ancient eloquence, en- 
courage the discussion of all problems and the establishment 
of different schools ; for the political spirit can not be driven 
from the sacred regions from whence it sprung. 

In the mean time Rome is a city of the dead. I followed 
with a sort of archaeological curiosity the ceremonies of the 
Holy Week. Some were Oriental from their ostentation, 
some Byzantine from their refinement, others trifling to puer- 
ility : all absolutely removed from this age, and from a relig- 
ious stand-point inferior to the solemn majesty of Spanish 
worship. A Spaniard or an American accustomed to the 
severity of our towns in the Holy Week, to that severity for 
bidding shops to be open and carriages to appear in the 
streets, could hardly understand that on Thursday and Good 
Friday they work in this city as on other days ; that all estab- 
lishments are open, and more people throng the sausage-shops 



28 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

to admire hams decorated with laurels and flowers than the 
churches to visit the Sagrarios. He -could not comprehend 
that the twelve paupers served by the Pope in memory of the 
Last Supper of the Saviour laugh as if they were in a thea- 
tre, and snatch at the sweets and comfits as if they were at a 
merry-making or picnic. He would not believe that at five 
o'clock on Thursday evening a Penitentiary Cardinal enters 
the Great Basilica, and, sitting at the left of the tomb of St. 
Peter, pardons sins by waving about a wand, and touching 
with it the heads of the penitents, as if he were fishing in the 
air. I have seen very pious ladies laugh at all these absurd- 
ities. 

But there is one grand and sublime ceremony, the Mise- 
rere of St. Peter. The music is exquisite, the effect surpris- 
ing. Rome saw, in the sixteenth century, that Protestantism 
surpassed her in music, as she excelled Protestantism in the 
arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture. To prevent 
this inferiority, she naturally sought a master of song, and 
found the sublime Palestrina, the Michael Angelo of the lyre. 
The Pope forbade the reproduction of his Miserere, in order 
that it should be heard only in that church whose gigantic 
arches were completely in harmony with its sublimity. One 
day a noble youth heard entranced the Miserere. This 
youth, who may be called the Raphael of music, learned it by 
heart, and divulged it to the world. He was Mozart. The 
German genius came to steal the secrets of the Latin genius 
in the eternal war between both races. No pen can describe 
the solemnity of the Miserere ! The night advances. The 



ARRIVAL IN ROME. 2 g 

Basilica is in darkness. Her altars are uncovered. Through 
the open arches there penetrates the uncertain light of dawn, 
which seems to deepen the shadows. The last taper of the 
tenebrario is hidden behind the altar. The cathedral resem- 
bles an immense mausoleum, with the faint gleaming of fu- 
nereal torches in the distance. The music of the Miserere is 
not instrumental. It is a sublime choir admirably combined. 
Now it comes like the far-off roar of the tempest, as the vi- 
bration of the wind upon the ruins or among the cypresses of 
tombs j again like a lamentation from the depths of the 
earth, or a moaning of heaven's angels breaking into sobs 
and sorrowful weeping. The marble statues, gigantic and of 
dazzling whiteness, are not completely hidden by the dark- 
ness, but appear like the spirits of past ages coming out of 
the sepulchres and loosing their shrouds, to join the intona- 
tion of this canticle of despair. The whole church is agita- 
ted and vibrates as if words of horror were arising from the 
stones. This profound and sublime lament, this mourning 
of bitterness dying away into airy circles, penetrates the heart 
by the intensity of its sadness ; it is the voice of Rome sup- 
plicating Heaven from her load of ashes, as if under her 
sackcloth she writhed in her death agony. To weep thus, to 
lament as the prophets of old by the banks of Euphrates, or 
among the scattered stones of the temple, to sigh in this 
sublime cadence, becomes a City whose eternal sorrow has 
not marred her eternal beauty. Thus she is enslaved. Da- 
vid alone can be her poet. Her canticle is majestic and 
unequaled. Rome, Rome ! thou art grand, thou art immortpl 



30 ARRIVAL IN ROME. 

even. in thy desperation and thy abandonment! The human 
heart shall be thy eternal altar, although the faith which has 
been thy prestige should perish, as the conquests that made 
thy greatness have departed ! None can rob thee of thy 
God-given immortality, which thy Pontiffs have sustained and 
which thy artists will forever preserve ! 



Chapter II. 

THE GREAT RUIN. 

To see the Eternal City was long the dream of my exist- 
ence, one of the most anxious desires of my heart. As a boy 
the Roman religion spoke to me of God, of immortality, of 
redemption ; of all that enlarges the horizon of the soul even 
to the infinite. In youth the Latin language was my chief 
study — a study that to a plastic imagination showed in high 
relief the sweet verses of Virgil, the conciseness of Tacitus, 
and the grander periods of Titus Livius ; those heroes of an- 
tiquity who lived for liberty and for their country. 

On entering the portals of the University education, Ro- 
man literature and Roman law inspire the mind with an ear- 
nest desire to see those hills from whence so much light has 
shone upon human consciences ; those sepulchres which 
inclose illustrious remains, which have nourished the plant 
of civilization upon our earth ; the stones embrowned by 
sun and time, where consul and tribune have carved their 
names, apostles and martyrs their crosses— true mementoes, 
not of time, but rather of the universal effort to obtain and 
realize an ideal, that absorbs and torments man, but which 
also elevates and transfigures him ; compelling him to be, as 



3 2 



THE GREAT RUIN. 



a warrior engaged in an incessant struggle, an agent and 
minister of endless progress. 

Tired of politics in Madrid, of commerce in London, of 
gayety in Paris, and even of Nature in Geneva; wearied also 
with the positive tendencies of our age, visible at every step 
and at every moment, I took refuge in Rome, in order to 
spend some happy hours with history, art, and religion. But 
I was unable to disengage myself from a republican friend 
who, sure of the agreement of our sentiments and of my aver- 
sion for the holy office, unburdened his sinful conscience, and 
broke his enforced silence of twenty years passed under the 
Pontifical rod, by describing the abuses of Roman absolut- 
ism, of which I had heard much, and which I heartily detest- 
ed ; but the relation of which at that time did not harmonize 
with my desire to wander among the ruins, remote from all 
political labor, and to give free course to my dreams and re- 
flections. 

" To what a place you come in search of knowledge I" said 
he, cold by temperament, before the marvels I viewed with 
transport. "Here every body is interested about lottery 
tickets ; no one for an idea of the human brain. The com- 
memoration of the anniversary of Shakespeare has been pro- 
hibited in this city of the arts. Her censorship is so wise 
that when a certain writer wished to publish a book on the 
discoveries of Volta she let loose on him the thunders of the 
Index, thinking it treated of Voltairianism — a philosophy 
which leaves neither repose nor digestion to our cardinals. 
On the other hand, a cabalistic and astrological book, pro- 



THE GREAT RUIN. „ 

fessing to divine the caprices of the lottery, has been printed 
and published under the Pontifical seal, as containing noth- 
ing contrary to religion, morals, or sovereign authority." 

" I know all this," I said. " I have read it a hundred times 
in Dumesnil, KaufTmann, Othendal, and Edmond About." 

" Then, knowing this, do you seek here new ideas ? Rabe- 
lais knew this city — Rabelais. On arriving, in place of writ- 
ing a dissertation on dogmas, he penned one on lettuces, the 
only good and fresh articles in this cursed dungeon. And 
priest though he was, a priest of the sixteenth century, more 
religious than our generation, he had a long correspondence 
with the pious Bishop of Maillerais on the children of the 
Pope ; for the reverend prelate had especially charged him to 
ascertain whether the Cavaliere Pietro Luis Farnese was the 
lawful or illegitimate son of his Holiness. Believe me, Rabe- 
lais knew Rome." 

Talking thus we turned into a cross street and soon found 
ourselves in a small square. A balcony of the principal house 
in this place was adorned with rich hangings of crimson dam- 
ask. Fixed upon the balcony there shone a crystal globe 
with gilded ornaments, at one side of which was a golden han- 
dle. Before the house an immense multitude, ragged and 
poverty-stricken, were pressed together. There was a singular 
expression in all the eyes turned upon the balcony ; in the 
hands were papers, images of saints, and scapularies ; a sepul- 
chral silence prevailed — a silence incomprehensible among 
the loquacious people of the South, and a solemnity suitable 
for a religious ceremony. My suspicions were confirmed when 

B 2 



34 THE GREAT RUIN. 

an acolyte came out on the balcony, and behind him some ec- 
clesiastics of rubicund visage and obese proportions. After 
the ecclesiastics there followed a Prince of the Holy Roman 
Church, attired in rustling violet silk and a tunic of white lace. 
He wore a small calotte or cap, also violet, with a rich tassel, 
the color of the pomegranate blossom. The silence was bro- 
ken by the joyful shouts of the multitude. Some of the peas- 
ants, who still preserve the antique statuesque beauty in the 
open forehead, the aquiline nose, and full lips, fell on their 
knees and folded their hands ecstatically, offering up prayers 
that sounded like conjurations. Others drew forth pictures 
of their holy protectors, mostly grimy, and kissed them in trans- 
port. Others jumped in the air, extending their arms, and pro- 
nouncing incoherent phrases. It was Saturday, the day for 
sorcery. Twelve o'clock approached, the bells began to sound 
the hour, and the crowd became still more anxiously excited. 
The cardinal lifted the golden handle and gave several turns 
to the globe of crystal. The acolyte put in his hand and drew 
forth a number. It was the official and Pontifical lottery! 
The Garibaldian was right. Is this a place for the intellect ? 
Let us plunge into antiquity as a diver in the sea. Our life 
is so short, our being so little, that to arrive at an idea of the 
infinite, to which we are attached by invisible ties — to compre- 
hend the immortality of which we dream — we must set behind 
the limited visible horizon and the unlimited rational horizon, 
behind every thought of life, interminable perspectives, dis- 
tant and immense, presentments which overcome us with beau- 
ty, glowing colors on magic palettes, the inspirations of celes- 



THE GREAT RUIN. 35 

tial poetry, the ideas we have evoked from the dust of ages 
and the abyss of history ! 

Is it true that we have before us a trembling light, pale and 
almost imperceptible ? It is like that of the glow-worm — like 
that which we call an idea ? Is it true that with this light we 
can kindle the material world, dissipate it, and offer it to the 
spirit as the smoke of a sacrifice ? Doubtless. Nature ap- 
pears to our eyes a thousand times, like a multiform image 
of conscience. The light is no more than the golden veil 
behind which is concealed the Infinite Mind, which grouped 
in scales of musical harmony suns and their satellites. The 
universe, that universe which overcomes us by its vastness, is 
the poem of our sentiments, the mysterious apocalypse writ- 
ten with words of stars, with lines of constellations in this im- 
measurable ether, of whose real existence we are certain, in 
that immensity without borders or foundations which we call 
space ! As at the feet of men the Pagan gods have fallen, 
like to the imperishable gods created and destroyed by the 
imagination, whose bones lie in heaps in the great necropolis 
of the Roman Campagna, so may worlds be ruined and retain 
among their cold ashes the warmth and vitality of our spirits ! 

While protesting with vain reflections against human little- 
ness, I arrived alone face to face with the Roman Coliseum. 
The first impression it produced was one of astonishment. 
If I had not been born on the sea-shore, and accustomed from 
childhood to its expanse, I should have been overcome by 
emotion. Seeing the Coliseum for the first time in manhood, 
my changing and lively fancy carried me back to my Profes- 



36 



THE GREAT RUIN. 



sorial chair, where we read the epigrams of Martial, and there 
rose to my lips the verses which we meet with in the learned 
guide-book published by Roman archaeologists : 

" Barbara Piramidum sileant miracula Memphis 

Omnis Ccesareo cedat labor Amphitheatro" 

These were the gardens of Nero ! Here he walked, clothed 
in purple, shod with azure buskins ; his temples crowned 
with laurels ; his eyes fixed on the heavens ; in his hands a 
cithern ; on his tongue ancient Greek verses, and in his heart 
evil passions — like a demon who tries to be a god, and, pos- 
sessing for a moment the divinity of art, turns and falls into 
the abyss. He was consul, tribune, dictator, Caesar, sovereign 
pontiff— all blessed him — all adored him ; but, alas ! he was 
despised by his own conscience. Posterity has not been so 
lenient toward him as toward the other emperors, for Nero 
was always a tyrant without remorse. 

There have been so many with dead consciences ! There 
have been so many that murder, burn, destroy whole cities, 
and believe these actions are meritorious in God's eyes ! 
To-day there is a Caesar of the North of Europe, who, in order 
to grasp the sceptre of Germany, has laid hold of unhappy 
France, and at the echo of his cannon — amid fire, ruin, deso- 
lation, and the groans of the dying — has invoked the name of 
God as the accomplice of his crimes ! Nero murdered his 
mother; but he felt on the sea-shore the grief of Orestes, and 
heard the murmurs of the Eumenides. Nero oppressed hu- 
manity; but in his last hour he proclaimed aloud that he ought 



THE GREAT RUIN. ^ 

to have been an artist, but not Caesar. The Pagan religion 
did more to preserve the conscience and its jurisdiction over 
life than pretended Christianity. 

I have been false to Nero, since his name is united to that 
of the Coliseum. In this place was the reservoir of the Ro- 
man gardens, and before that a colossal statue of the divine 
emperor with the attributes of Apollo, the god of light and 
harmony, holding the lyre to whose melody the Muses danced, 
and on his temples laid the green laurel of Daphne. The 
family of Vespasian, in hatred of the son of Agrippina, had 
destroyed his golden house full of immortal works, tearing 
down the Colossus and building the Amphitheatre in its 
place ; but they could destroy neither the name nor the rec- 
ord of the Apollo statue of Nero ; and this name, degener- 
ated and corrupt — Coliseum — leaves to-day this colossal mon- 
ument ! 

Indeed, it looks less the work of men than of nature. These 
gigantic proportions, these immense masses, seem not to have 
been created by human strength, but by the power of the 
Great Architect, of the Great Artist who has raised the eter- 
nal pyramids of the Alps, and has built up the wondrous cone 
of Vesuvius by the creating fire whose reverberations resound 
with the manufacture of crystals and granite. It is only when 
we observe the harmony of its arches, the sequence of its col- 
umns, the rhythm of that architecture which ascends to heaven 
as a canticle, that we find those enormous blocks have been 
distributed by human thought, and that the Amphitheatre has 
been sealed with the stamp of its laws. 



38 THE GREAT RUIN. 

Now the Coliseum is for the most part in ruins. When it 
was all perfect, two flights of steps supported it as huge ped- 
estals. Four stories are placed above. Eighty open arches, 
forming eighty entrances, surround the first story. At the 
sides of the arches are raised half-columns attached to the 
wall, and belonging to the severe Doric order. Upon this 
first story there extends a cornice, and over the cornice other 
eighty arches, by the sides of which are placed half-columns 
of the lighter and more graceful Ionic architecture. Another 
cornice, the same as the preceding, completes the second 
story, and serves as a base for the third, also cut in arches, 
and ornamented with columns, but of the rich and florid Co- 
rinthian order. The monument is completed by an airy por- 
tico, resembling a chiseled crown-light, ornamented by pilas- 
ters, and having openings through which the heavenly azure 
of the sky seems to look more brilliant. This vast building 
is fifty-two metres high. To define it in a few words, I would 
call it a circular mountain, raised, sculptured, and chiseled by 
the labor of man. The side toward the north-east is in the 
best preservation. On its walls the succession of arches can 
be best studied, the harmonious staircase formed by the col- 
umns, the order and the grace of its cornices, the severe maj- 
esty of the first story, and the lightness of the upper part, 
which crowns all, and gives to such an enormous mass the fin- 
ish and beauty of a jewel. 

In these monuments we see the conceptions and character 
of Roman architecture \ Grecian grace and beauty is replaced 
by colossal grandeur. The Coliseum is a monument worthy 



THE GREAT RUIN, 39 

of a sovereign people, of a conquering people, of a Titanic 
people : — of a people which counted legions of slaves and armies 
of workmen, on whose shoulders alone were borne to giddy 
heights these immense blocks of stone. Those who construct- 
ed the Coliseum had seen the East and its huge buildings, on 
which they desired to lay the Orders of Grecian architecture 
as a garland. Roman architecture has not the beauty of the 
Corinthian, which took for its model the lovely form of a Gre- 
cian woman — of that goddess the mother of all the arts. The 
Roman buildings are less beautiful but more majestic than the 
Greek, and there floats over them the invisible conception of 
a universal, assimilating spirit, which has united Grecian har- 
mony and Asiatic magnitude, abounding on the earth and in 
history, without touching an ideal that soars to be lost among 
the heavens in rosy clouds and mysteries, half light, half shad- 
ow. Later Roman monuments, constructed on as vast a scale, 
we shall see tending to useful ends — practical, immediate, like 
all improvements. The god Eros, the Greek god of love, has 
been replaced in Rome by the god of all uncleanness — the 
god of that substance which covers and fertilizes the fields, as 
Hellenic metaphysics have been replaced by right and moral- 
ity, with principles and. sciences relating more immediately to 
life and society. 

The Coliseum has all the characteristics of Roman archi- 
tecture. It can be better learned in this great example, left 
miraculously by past ages, than in the pages of Vitruvius, 
probably altered and interpolated by the learned of the Re- 
naissance period. Look at this mortar, that seems hardened 



4 THE GREAT RUIN. 

as granite is hardened by the irregular internal movements of 
the planet ! Look at the cellars and vaults — contrivances un- 
known among the Greeks — admirably constructed in this land 
of strength and empire ! Behold the arches which the Hel- 
lenic world never erected, and that look like the triumphal 
gates by which history entered with a new life and a new 
spirit ! See how the Roman has placed a plinth to support 
the Doric pillar which the Greek rooted in the bosom of the 
earth as the trunk of a tree ! Contemplate those three Or- 
ders, always separated in Greek architecture, and united here 
in an ascending scale : first, the most simple and severe, the 
Doric, at the base ; then the lightest and most elegant, the 
Ionic, in the centre ; and lastly, the most florid and ornate, 
the Corinthian, crowning the whole as the diadem and capital 
of the monument ! The spirit of a constructive people is vis- 
ible in the whole building. The Roman has united the three 
Orders in his erections, as he has united the Greek gods in 
the Pantheon, and his style is the great epilogue of antique 
genius. Rome took from Greece her metaphysics and her re- 
ligion, from the Sabines their women, from Spain her swords, 
from the East her arches, and from Etruria her bows. Thus 
it may be said that Greece is the flower, and Rome the fruit, 
of ancient history. Monuments like the Coliseum are, in fact, 
but the mighty bones of the immense organism which com- 
poses the Eternal City. 

And to think that this edifice, which has conquered twenty 
ages, with all their destruction, was built in less than three 
years ! It was erected, as we have heard, by some emperors 



THE GREAT RUIN. 4I 

of the Flavian family, under whose domination Tacitus cursed 
despotism and mourned the republic. Titus, whom universal 
adulation named the delight of the human race, burned Jeru- 
salem ; on her calcined stones he immolated a million and a 
half of Jews, and destined the rest to die in the gladiatorial 
shows of Syrian cities, to be trophies of the triumphal entry 
of the conqueror by the Via Sacra, to raise on shoulders livid 
from the lash the masses of this amphitheatre, and to be de- 
voured by hungry beasts in the circus ! 

Titus — after having loved Berenice as Antony loved Cleo- 
patra, after having heard his own victims call him Messiah, 
after having been called a god by those Egyptians whose fields 
gods visited, after having consecrated under the shadow of the 
pyramids nine bullocks to the god Apis, after having organ- 
ized an escort of Oriental Satraps, and enjoyed through an 
entire day the cruel honors of triumph beneath the arches of 
the Eternal City — demolished the golden house of Nero, ex- 
changed the statue of the sun for that of Caesar adored by 
the populace ; he dried up the lake which extended between 
the Mount Caelium and the Esquiline Mount, tore down the 
groves, cut up the pasturage on classic shores, and raised the 
greatest amphitheatre the world has yet beheld, solemnizing 
its inauguration by a hundred days of feasting, in which there 
were combats of stags, elephants, tigers, lions, and of men — 
terrible struggles, which sprinkled with hot blood the face of 
Caesar and those of his people. Nine thousand animals per- 
ished during those sanguinary orgies upon the arena. His- 
tory, which has preserved their number, does not mention that 



42 THE GREAT RUIN. 

of the human sacrifices ; doubtless because slaves were more 
worthless than wild beasts to the Caesars. 

Titus sought something to assuage his insatiable thirst of 
ambition, and sought it vainly. After having the world under 
his hand, there was no more for him to obtain ; he had upon 
his shoulders the mantle of the Caesars; all submitted like 
sheep to his authority; the world was subdued and silent. 
But, unable to attain his wishes and satisfy his ambition, the 
heart of Titus was broken. He had nothing to desire, or had 
but desires that were vague and infinite, which dissipated 
themselves in fantastic dreams, exhausting with them his ex- 
istence. Certain it is that, despising the throne, a profound 
sadness took possession of him : his frame was attenuated by 
a kind of internal consumption ; his respiration was heavy with 
sighs and his heart with sorrow; his eyes were filled with tears 
and his life with illusions ; his sleep became oppressive ; his 
past was remorseful, his future terrifying ; till one day, wan- 
dering in the poisonous Roman Campagna in search of a spot 
where to sleep away his disgust, he expired, looking up to 
heaven with eyes inflamed by the fever of infinite and unsatis- 
fied desires. While I thought of the life and death of Titus, I 
wondered at the boundless ambition of a Caesar to rule the 
heavens as he possessed the earth, without any other advan- 
tage than to keep beneath his foot the seething mass of his 
crimes, and to heap upon his head the maledictions of hu- 
manity. 

Indulging these thoughts and recollections, I went over the 
whole monument. I observed and studied it as the naturalist 



THE GREAT RUIN. 43 

might study a mountain. I went through all the passages, so 
spacious that a hundred thousand spectators could enter and 
depart with rapidity, and without incommoding each other. I 
mounted to the highest steps, from whence can be seen the 
Roman Campagna: before me were the distant lagunes; to 
the right the Arches of Titus and of Constantine, the Pyramid 
of Caius Cestus, and the Basilica of St. Paul ; on the left the 
Catacombs of St. Sebastian, the Via Appia with its double 
row of tombs; behind, the Palatine, the Forum, the Via Sacra, 
the Arch of Septimus Severus, the Capitol. In whatever place, 
ideas are preserved like a rich treasure ; those scenes are sug- 
gestive of recollections ; they are the true West of the ancient 
regime, the true East of modern progress. 

I was so much absorbed that evening came upon me im- 
perceptibly. The city bells announced the hour for vespers ; 
the owls and other birds of the night began their first cries ; 
I heard the hoarse and monotonous croak of the toad and 
frog in the distant lagunes, and the chant of a procession en- 
tering the neighboring church ; spiritual voices mingled with 
those of nature, which made my meditations still more pro- 
found and silent, as if the soul escaped from the body to 
attach itself, after the manner of parasitic plants, to the dust 
of imperishable ruins. 

The full moon rose in the serene and tranquil horizon, and 
lent with her melancholy rays fresh poetic touches to the 
arches, to the columns, to the vaults, to the scattered stones, 
to the desolation of the place ; to the cross reared in its 
centre, as an eternal vengeance taken by the gladiators, oblig- 



44 THE GREAT RUIN. 

ing the most abject of the Roman people to bless and adore 
the once infamous gibbet of slaves, now transformed into the 
standard of modern civilization ! 

At the splendor of the rising moon, at the echo of the 
bells which sounded among the uncertain shadows, I seemed 
to see, awaking from their dust, the souls of departed genera- 
tions, coming with silent flight to revisit those spots conse- 
crated by their souvenirs and beloved even in the tomb. I 
wished to stay the spirits, and tell them, alas ! all that passes 
in our world. I would have said : " If you be souls of trib- 
unes, of senators, of Caesars, know all that you loved has 
perished, and that already ages have worn even the steps of 
your altars by their kisses ; all those gods you believe im- 
mortal have passed away, and the ideas by which they were 
animated, whirled like withered leaves in the abyss of his- 
tory, have been loosened from the human spirit by continual 
renovation of ideas. No more do the Nereids move grace- 
fully in the foam of the sea ; no more do nymphs of marble 
whiteness sigh in the murmuring rivulet! The god Pan has 
dropped his pipe, once filled with the melody of the groves. 
To the intoxication of the Bacchantes have succeeded macer- 
ation, penance, and an indifference to the charms of nature. 
A Nazarene, a son of Israel, of the slaves, of that race which 
raised with a chain on their foot and a lash on their shoul- 
der the mighty Coliseum, has conquered and buried the 
gods who inspired Horace and Virgil, who sustained Scipio 
in the plains of Carthage and Marius in the putrid fields — 
the gods who brought forth art and directed victory! In 



THE GREAT RUIN. 4S 

vain did Tacitus look contemptuously on the followers of this 
obscure youth, a poor carpenter of Judea ! in vain Apuleius 
ridiculed them in his apologies and fables ! Not even the 
immortal scorn of Lucian could dissipate the breath that ex- 
haled from those lips, the truth and justice which poured 
from that infinite mind ! The gods died, and upon their 
corpses dead Rome has fallen ! The Forum is now a field 
where cows graze peacefully. The Coliseum is a pile of 
ruins, where Romans preserve and worship the gibbet of an- 
cient slavery. The Via Sacra is no more. Upon the Capi- 
tol are performed the religious ceremonies of the Nazarene. 
Those you thought disturbers of the public peace have the 
altars and monuments once sacred to the gods of Cato and 
Camillus. Barbarous hordes from the North stifled the ora- 
cles, interrupted the sacred rites, delivering (as if it were a 
spoil) the human conscience to crowds of cenobites, who is- 
sued from the sewers and Catacombs. And when the new 
creed had taken possession of souls, when it had substituted 
its altars for those of Pagans — as if the human mind was con- 
demned to weave and unweave continually the same web of 
ideas — new champions, new tribunes, new apostles, new mar- 
tyrs arose to overthrow the faith of their ancestors. And 
the human conscience passed through new phases, and the 
human heart experienced new tortures, and new extremes of 
sorrow troubled the bleeding earth. 

As my lips murmur these vague and incoherent imaginings, 
my ears seem to hear sounds of wailing. Is it the moaning 
of the wind among pines and cypresses ? Is it the last sigh 



4 6 THE GREAT RUIN. 

of the meadows sinking in the arms of night, or the echo of 
a great city, of its orisons and lamentations, like the expres- 
sion of overwhelming and deep emotion ? 

"Sunt lacryma rerum /" 

In imagination I beheld a festival in the amphitheatre. 
This enormous pile was not now a skeleton. Here stood a 
statue, there a trophy; opposite, a monolith brought from 
Asia or Egypt. The people entered, after having washed and 
perfumed themselves in the public baths, mounting to the top 
to disperse over the places previously assigned to them. At 
one side was the gate of life, through which passed the com- 
batants \ at the other the gate of death, through which were 
dragged the corpses. The shouts of the multitude, the sharp 
sound of the trumpets, mingle with the howling and roaring 
of wild animals. While the senators and the emperor arrive, 
attendants of inferior municipal rank scatter parched peas 
among the people, which they carry in wicker baskets like 
those of our traders at fairs. The ground is brilliant with 
gold powder, with carmine and minium to hide the blood, 
while the light is tempered by great awnings of Oriental pur- 
ple, which tinges the spectators with its glowing reflection. 

The senators occupy the lowest steps. Behind them are 
placed the cavaliers. Above are those fathers of families 
who have given a certain number of children to the empire. 
Beyond these are the people. And on the top, crowning the 
whole, are the Roman matrons, clothed in light gauzes and 
loaded with costly jewels, perfuming the air with aromatics 



THE GREAT RUIN. 4 y 

carried in golden apples, and kindling all hearts by their soft 
words and tender glances. 

While the spectators look to the emperor to give the signal 
for the commencement of the festival, conversation is car- 
ried on in a loud murmur. Look at that glutton — he is so 
rich that he knows not half of his possessions ! Lolia Pau- 
lina is wearing emeralds worth sixty million sexterces — a 
small sum compared with the enormous robberies of her 
grandfather in the oppressed provinces. He who accompa- 
nies Caesar stole at a supper of Claudius a golden cup. These 
reckless madcaps salute the orator Regulus, for they fear the 
venom distilled from his viperous tongue. He is honored, 
while generals who have conquered barbarian hordes, and 
died in defense of Rome, have been ten years unburied. The 
doctor Eudemus arrives, and his pupils in corruption and de- 
bauchery are not behind. That child of eight years is al- 
ready depraved. That lady, who belongs to one of the most 
noble Roman families, has quitted the list of matrons and be- 
come degraded. 

Caesar is received by the people with loud acclamations ; 
he is always welcome at festivals and especially at massacres. 
The priests and vestals offer sacrifices to the protecting gods 
of Rome. Blood flows \ the entrails of the victims are quick- 
ly consumed in the sacred fire ; the music sounds, the mul- 
titude vociferates, and at an Imperial signal come forth the 
gladiators, who salute the crowd with a smile on their lips, as 
if a delicious feast awaited them instead of a cruel and re- 
lentless death. 



48 THE GREAT RUIN. 

These unfortunates are divided in several categories. 
Some guide cars, painted green ; others shelter themselves 
behind round bucklers of iron, on the outside of which sharp 
knives are fixed. They throw their tridents in the air, and 
catch them again with much dexterity. Their costume is a 
red tunic, azure buskins, a gilded helmet surmounted by a 
shining fish. The equestrians conduct their horses with great 
agility in the circus. The light is reflected on the steel 
breastplates, collars, and bracelets. Their robes are many- 
colored, and bring to mind Oriental dresses. Last come the 
duelists — a body all handsome, all unclothed, all imitating 
in their artistic attitudes the positions of classic sculptures. 
They are saluted frantically by the people, for they are the 
strongest, the most exposed, and the most valiant. 

They were born in the mountains, in the desert, among the 
caresses of nature, breathing the pure air of the fields and of 
sacred liberty. War and war only has torn them from their 
country. Rome has fed them for the sake of their blood — 
blood to be offered in sacrifice to the majesty of the Roman 
people. Some of them now about to wound and murder each 
other have contracted close friendships. Perhaps some are 
brothers by nature, brothers by sentiment, obliged thus to en- 
danger and immolate themselves, when, united by the same 
sentiments, they wish to bury their swords in the heart of 
Caesar, and to avenge their race and country. 

Already they lie in ambush, they search, they threaten, they 
entice and persist in this boisterous and bloody strife. If 
any one, moved by terror for himself or compassion for his 



THE GREAT RUIN. 49 

opponent, draws back or seems to shrink, the master of the 
circus tortures him with a red-hot iron button applied on his 
naked shoulder. The crimson blood flows and smokes in 
the circus. One man has slipped and fallen. The people 
shout, believing him dead, and hiss when he rises. He loses 
heart after vain and desperate efforts to keep on foot. This 
one falls, pierced by a single wound given through his buck- 
ler. That one writhes in insupportable anguish, which looks 
like an epileptic spasm. Two are mortally wounded, but in 
falling fling away their swords, and embrace each other as a 
support and help in the death agony. Mutilated limbs, torn 
intestines, groans of anguish, the death-rattle of the expiring, 
faces contracted and fixed, last sighs mingled with lamenta- 
tions, cries of rage and desperation ; — all this is a grand spec- 
tacle for the Roman people, who shout, clap their hands, be- 
come intoxicated, infuriated ; following the combat with nerv- 
ous anxiety, straining their eyes from the sockets to see more 
of the slaughter, opening their lungs and nostrils to inhale the 
bloody vapors. 

Anger seems to float as the master passion over all this 
feast of blood. Antique sculpture, generally of an Olympian 
severity, has left us the lively image of this anger in the statue 
of the dying gladiator. Over his dilated eyes hang his dark 
and knitted eyebrows. His robust frame is subject to a 
wonderful tension. His head is advanced, and makes an in- 
clination over his breast in order to aim his thrust aright. 
His body is in the act of rushing forward to the combat, sup- 
ported only on the right foot. His left arm threatens, at the 

C 



5° 



THE GREAT RUIN. 



moment that his right wrist, strongly contracted, prepares to 
give a mortal blow. The statue is the image of hatred. And 
hatred has engendered in Rome a thick cloud of anger, of 
curses that found a terrible satisfaction in the Apocalyptic 
night of eternal vengeance, in the night of the victories of 
Alaric, of the orgies of barbarians, the sons of slaves and glad- 
iators ! 

Who, who can turn aside Rome's punishment? All her 
power, all her majesty, all her greatness have been destroyed 
for an idea. There in the Catacombs hide obscure sectari- 
ans who oppose spiritual light to ancient sensuality — to the 
Pagan and Imperial religion, dogmas which Rome can not ad- 
mit without perishing. These sectarians fly the light of day, 
and bury themselves fearfully in the Catacombs. There they 
paint the Good Shepherd who guides them to eternity, the 
Dove which announced the termination of the great deluge 
of tears in which our life is overwhelmed. There they intone 
hymns to an obscure tribune, poor and feeble ; who did not 
die as a conqueror, but humbly and ignominiously on a cross. 
From thence have come forth those confessors of the new 
faith, to seal it with their blood on the arena of the circus. 
The old man, the youth, the tender maiden, have heard with- 
out trembling the cries of the Asiatic tiger, the roar of the lion 
of Africa. Hungry beasts of prey have come from the dens 
still visible in the foundations of the circus, and fixed their 
teeth and claws in the defenseless bodies of the martyrs. 
While panthers, hyenas, tigers, and lions divide the palpitating 
remains ; while they drink the blood of these Christians with 



THE GREA T R UIN. 5 x 

insatiable fury, the Romans give thanks to Caesar, believing 
that a superstition has been destroyed with the lives of the 
unbelievers, and that with the blood the beasts have devoured 
a heresy ! 

And now emperors have died, and praetors are dispersed, 
and the stones of the Coliseum have fallen, and a new idea 
has replaced the ancient belief, and converted them from be- 
ing persecuted to persecutors ; has attempted in its turn to 
destroy new sects, to stifle new opinions — not being able to 
arrive — neither with its excommunications, nor its inquisition, 
nor its tortures — at the immortal idea of the human spirit, that 
shines eternally among gods and ruins, among those who die 
and those who suffer, among creeds and dogmas, perpetual as 
the sun in the choirs of the universe. 



Chapter III. 

THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

If the Roman city above ground is curious and wonderful, 
that which is hidden beneath is still more astonishing. Above, 
the wind shakes the ivy and the vine upon the walls, and all 
around reveals the faith of other ages. Below, in the solem- 
nity of darkness, where the coldness and humidity of night 
are eternal ; in those caves and grottoes formed in the depths 
of the earth, those silent vaults, whose obscurity is sometimes 
lighted by false fires, the product of decaying bones heaped 
there for ages, there is now no living soul. But in other times 
— times sacred and solemn — those Catacombs contained the 
germ of that faith which gave vitality to the human conscience 
and enlightenment to the world. 

I turned with religious reverence toward those places hal- 
lowed by the veneration of so many ages, my mind overcome 
with tenderness and emotion ; indeed, the Roman Campagna 
invites to meditation on the instability of human greatness 
and the worthlessness of the greatest earthly majesty. 

There remains only a recollection of that population which 
once filled the world. Of those institutions which supported 
the weight of so many ages, we see but the traces. Broken 
walls, a few arches, some columns, half-legible inscriptions, 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. c<i 

ruined sepulchres, mutilated statues — things looking like the 
de'bris of a great shipwreck, the spoil of a terrible tempest. I 
understood there, among so much destruction, the mystic 
strength by which some souls are sustained, the contempt for 
an unstable world, where all is so soon and surely lost, wast- 
ed, and consumed ; I understood their aspiration for the rest 
of the grave — their noble impatience for the possession of the 
infinite in another world less uncertain and more durable. 

I, who have the ideas of my time, who believe in the ever- 
lasting character of the Universe, who look on death not as 
annihilation, but as renovation — I feel disposed to melan- 
choly reflection, and fancy I hear the trumpet of the Last 
Judgment sounding over the trembling spheres, and the lam- 
entations of the prophets over the ruined cities. 

I saw in the mountains of the Apennines remains of antiq- 
uity : crumbling tombs strewed around ; broken arches of gi- 
gantic aqueducts, towers ruined as if they had been struck 
and shattered by a thunderbolt. In all these fragments of 
half-pulverized buildings I seem to see some of the grand 
Apocalyptic visions ; the remains of planets scattered by the 
swords of destroying angels in the solitude and immensity of 
space. The face of the beloved Apostle, idealized by the 
sculptor's hand in modern ages, eternally youthful as the gods 
of the heathen, eloquent as a Grecian orator speaking the 
language of Plato — he who put the Word nurtured in the shade 
of the Piraeus in harmony with the fundamental doctrines of 
Christianity — this face that the Renaissance has realized in 
its pictures and statues I saw at Patmos — among the Greek 



54 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



islands whose lovely shores smile like sirens. At the sight 
of the blue Mediterranean and its classic shores, its coral- 
strewed waters, whose murmur is like an ancient canticle, I 
saw this ideal face, mystic as a prayer, sweet as hope ; I saw 
it as I read in the Revelation the punishment of the dishon- 
ored Babylon, while good and bad angels fought rudely in the 
air, and the rocks struck the planets, and the dead, bursting 
the grave-clothes and the sepulchres, obtained their bodies, 
and went up to the Last Judgment to hear in that supreme 
moment their sentence from the Eternal Judge of all the 
Earth. 

We went to the Catacombs through heaps of ruins. The 
desolation of the landscape added to the sadness of our souls. 
Exiles, and wandering far from our country, our hearts seemed 
blighted as the immense tract of volcanic soil through which 
we passed. All spoke of death and decay. We could have 
fancied ourselves in some infernal sphere, if Nature, with the 
fresh dews of morning, the green grass between the stones, 
and the early spring flowers — the butterflies hovering above, 
the tender leaves shooting from the buds, the birds' nests al- 
ready formed in the young foliage — all the sweet beauties of 
April — had not shown us the loveliness of life and the ever- 
new delight of Nature's festivals. 

Oh Nature ! immovable in the midst of movement, unique 
amid variety, surrounded with ether which penetrates every 
pore, forming the spirit and its atmosphere, with the continual 
succession of organic beings which change and are trans- 
formed. Oh Nature! durable and unchangeable; subject to 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 55 

death and to eternity ; to the limited and the infinite ; dif- 
fused over the immensity of space and compressed into or- 
ganic beings : from the stars which irradiate the heavens, to 
the flowers which perfume the air with their aroma \ from the 
impalpable gases that evaporate, to the great mountain chains 
with their glaciers, where the snow whitens the volcanoes 
struggling with internal fires ; from the almost imperceptible 
nebulae, to the great worlds which travel through space ; from 
the grain of sand drifted by the wave, to the farthest stars of 
the Milky Way, whose light reaches us in twenty thousand 
centuries — poor outcasts clinging to this little planet. In that 
vast circle, whose centre — according to modern science — is 
found every where, and whose circumference is nowhere, 
there happens not the annihilation of a single molecule; 
nothingness exists not ; it is the shadow of our thoughts, the 
apprehension of our folly, the phantasm of our feelings, an idea 
without reality, which the confined limits of our reason and 
the incurable imperfection of our language has obliged us to 
place in the eternal ocean of life. It is true that stars have 
been extinguished in our solar system, as fauna and flora have 
disappeared from our world \ but the warmth of universal life 
is enduring, and the growth and progress of the most perfect 
organism is unceasing. 

Let us then enter these subterranean caverns with our 
thoughts absorbed by the infinite, and our hearts resting on 
the hope of immortality. 

The Catacomb most generally visited is that of San Sebas- 
tiano, and the one most deserving of deep study is the Cata- 



5 6 THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

comb of San Calixto. About four miles eastward of Rome, 
between the Via Appia and the Via Ardeatina, under heaps 
of all sorts of debris and rubbish, close to cypress groves, 
which deepen the sad solemnity of the landscape, lies hidden 
the largest and most remarkable of Christian cemeteries. It 
was a refuge for the persecuted, a dwelling-place for martyrs, 
a rest for the dead, a temple for the living, the assembly of 
those bold innovators who brought a new light into the world 
and a new sentiment into life. I advise my readers not to 
visit these sanctuaries without taking with them the books and 
maps of the celebrated Catholic archaeologist, Bossi. As the 
explorer of American woods — that land of the future — ad- 
vances armed with his short hatchet in these untrodden paths, 
cuts down the trees, drives away the reptiles, roots up the 
brushwood, and creates by his labor a habitation for his 
family, so the archaeological explorer of a subterranean world 
plunges into shadow, into the asylum of birds of the night, 
into crumbling dungeons, between labyrinths of grottoes, 
liable to be crushed by fragments from the fragile walls, to be 
lost forever in some corner of those cities of the dead, in that 
tomb of palpable darkness, mingling his bones with those 
traces he wished to snatch from the silence of sad and un- 
grateful forgetfulness. 

How many times the light and spongy soil rained sand on 
the forehead of such a one ! How often a shower of stones 
and bricks fell at his feet, covering him with thick clouds of 
dust, and oppressing his overcharged and exhausted respira- 
tion ! How often he lost his way in that immense labyrinth — 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS, 57 

could not find the North in that ocean of darkness, and fan- 
cied he had also lost the outlet, and had found a certain death 
of slow starvation ! By the uncertain light of a dying lamp, 
the bold miner in human affairs, the diver into the abyss of 
time, reads the inscriptions traced fifteen centuries ago by one 
of those sectarians who collected human remains in the great 
circus, and placed them in the earth with prayers whose 
echoes are still heard, and tears whose exhalations remain in 
that blessed atmosphere. 

The first thing which astonishes one on descending into 
the tombs is the gigantic labor of those who excavated them, 
without having either the mechanical or chemical means of 
our civilization. Though it is said these subterranean cities 
were opened for quarries, their especial peculiarities, their 
galleries placed one over the other — there are even as many 
as five stories of tombs — their disposition, that preserves a 
certain regularity, reveals a perfectly conceived and matured 
plan to which the construction of these passages has been 
submitted, probably by the early propagators of the new creed, 
who left there the germs of those doctrines which were to feed 
the souls of future generations. Even the nature of the soil 
has been studied with scientific attention. They have care- 
fully avoided the argillaceous clay and chalk, the overflow of 
water, and all places that easily retain moisture ; they have 
dug the tombs and temples in soft granular stone — volcanic, 
but hard and consistent, less accessible to damp forged by 
the creating fire, and suited to all kinds of durable build- 
ing. For it was essential to preserve these asylums not only 

C 2 



5 8 THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

from the fury of men, but from the calamities incidental to 
nature. 

To this end the early Christians sought the protection of 
the laws. And the Roman law protected, before all, and 
above every thing in the world, the places sacred to sepulture. 
The soil which was the property of the dead was undisturbed 
by the living. If land was sold, bequeathed, or given away, 
neither sale, testament, nor donation was valid to alienate the 
sepulchre, which was always excepted — always held in the 
possession of the families who placed there the ashes of their 
kindred. Thus the Christians could open . graves in the 
depths of the earth, raise lofty monuments, and, under the 
title of adjacent ground, annex much land to the sepulchre — 
like the sepulchre, sacred. The Christians, profiting by the 
protection of the law for their cemeteries, took land, opened 
subterranean galleries, and there deposited the treasured re- 
mains of those of their sect and of their family. A series of 
Roman arches constitute the true nucleus of the Catacombs. 
Thus by a superstitious respect of Pagans for the rights of 
property, the Christians obtained a home for their worship 
and a resting-place for their dead. The same emperors who 
persecuted the Christians as believers respected them as pro- 
prietors. Collective property, such as was the property of 
the early Christians, had a legal existence in the code of laws 
and in the sanction of the tribunal. If there were confisca- 
tions, as in the reigns of Valerian and Diocletian, they were 
passing, exceptional, and interrupted ; soon effaced by a res- 
titution which proved the lasting nature of the right, as the 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. S9 

restitution of Galieno and of Magencius. Yet, notwithstand- 
ing, the empire pursued illicit societies, and declared as 
such those religious communities which sacrificed to their 
dogmas the integrity of their lives. And Rome, which ac- 
knowledged the epilogue and synthesis of the ancient world, 
which admitted into her temples all the divinities worshiped 
among Asiatic peoples — Rome rejected the God of the Isra- 
elites and the God of the Christians; doubtless the other 
gods were, like her own, gods of nature, while the God of the 
Jew and the Christian was the God of the spirit, come to dis- 
place the material and powerful goddess of the earth — the 
goddess Rome. Notwithstanding this hatred, confirmed by 
so many persecutions, Rome respected all benevolent asso- 
ciations having for their object the interment or the praying 
for the dead ; not questioning as to their religious belief 
when that tended to recognize immortality. Protected by 
this respect of the Roman people for the dead, the early 
Christians prepared their temples and cemeteries. 

And the burial-places of the primitive Christians were nec- 
essarily very extensive. The Romans burned their dead, and 
collected their ashes in vases of marble or porphyry ; while 
the Christians, who believed not only in the immortality of 
the soul, but also in the resurrection of the body^ buried their 
dead entire; in the sepulchres. Thus the cities of the dead 
soon assumed proportions as colossal as the cities of the liv- 
ing ; and under triumphal arches, under the magnificent cir- 
cus, under the temples containing the gods they believed 
eternal, under palaces where emperors reigned who thought 



60 THE ROM AX CATACOMBS. 

themselves omnipotent, — beneath all these there extended 
cities of tombs toward the four points of the horizon — cities 
with their streets, their crossways, their squares ; cities of the 
dead, who, notwithstanding, quickened a new spirit destined 
to destroy ancient Rome and to build upon her ruins another 
civilization ! 

Let us note the difference between the Catacombs of the 
first century and those of later times — the third century, for 
example. The former were more beautiful and more highly 
ornamental. Marble was frequently used in the first cent 
ury ; brilliant stuccoes, lively colors, artistic relievos, fres- 
coes worthy of a place beside those of Pompeii ; classical in- 
scriptions with high-sounding and noble names of aristocratic 
families, monumental sarcophagi, all constructed and beauti- 
fied by those artists — a little Pagan, it is true — who embodied 
by their pencils and their artistic chiseling the essence of 
classic inspiration, whether they represented the transition 
of one course of ideas to another, or of one epoch to another 
in history. Such is life ! The most transcendent revolutions 
separate themselves timidly from their origin, and still cling 
to the old institutions they seek to destroy. The Church, 
although born under the malediction of the Synagogue, col- 
lects and consecrates its books, uses and extends its lan- 
guage. Christianity, although increasing under Pagan per- 
secution, copied its symbols and sanctified its arts. Philoso- 
phy separates itself from theological science, but preserves 
many of its maxims, and binds rationalistic formulas to the 
phrases of the ancient schools. The mystical painters of the 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 61 



Middle Ages had their example in the painters of the Cata- 
combs. Here is the true genealogy of Cimabue and of Fra 
Angelico. Here the dove which accompanied Venus in the 
ancient picture, serves now, with the olive-branch in her 
beak, to announce the promise of the resurrection. Perhaps 
it is not as well designed or chiseled as the beauteous dove 
of Greece, which built her nest among myrtles and lentiscus, 
and which accompanied with her melodious warble the hymn 
of Hellenic temples ; yet Christianity has conveyed beneath 
her white wings the sublime enlightenment of a new spiritu- 
ality. Thus it is with the human soul. It believes in the 
sentiment that has transformed it, which it thinks has grown 
by sudden and miraculous revelations, when really it has 
been transformed, when it has grown by internal effort, perse- 
vering and constant, which has slowly elaborated the new 
ideas, food of so many generations, attributed in the excite- 
ment of the heart and imagination to the miracles of the 
prophets, of angels, and teachers ; just as the artist or poet 
attributes to the smile of the chaste muse floating in space, or 
concealed among the rosy clouds of heaven, the inspirations 
which arise in his own soul ! 

The Catacombs of Apostolic times are more ornate than 
those of later ages, when Christianity was considerably ex- 
tended. I can only attribute this fact to the same reason as 
that given by the Comte cle Richmont, in his erudite work on 
Primitive Christian Archaeology, and not to any connection 
with the classes which belonged to the new religion. History 
contradicts this latter view. The power of the Christian as- 



62 THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

sociation worked the wonders of the first Catacombs. The 
artists, who belonged always to the past by the poetry of 
their recollections, or to the future by the poetry of their 
hopes, were touched to the heart by the new faith, and ex- 
pressed their sentiments in the solitude of the Catacombs. 
The insignificance of the persecuted sect sometimes served 
them as a shield against their persecutors. The first Caesars 
feared the Stoics, whose humanitarian principles contrasted 
too strongly with the fundamental idea of the Romans — the 
idea of the incontestable superiority of the great city. But 
they did not fear the Christians, who seemed confounded 
with those Jews whom they brought away captive after the 
taking of Jerusalem ; a people whom they saw with contempt 
in the exhibitions of the circus, in combat, in agony, in tor- 
tures and death, serving by their sufferings to amuse the pop- 
ulace. 

When Christianity increased in the third century; when 
the number of its churches terrified those who beheld ruin 
and desolation in the abandonment of the Pagan temples; 
when the tendency of the times was to separate from the an- 
cient faith, and the disposition of the people was also to 
abandon the ancient Empire ; when, among so many moral 
and material ruins, came, like a flock of hungry vultures to 
an unburied corpse, the irruption of barbarians, who scared 
them by their shouts, the clanging of their arms, and the fe- 
rocity of their instincts ; the last Romans attributed these 
misfortunes to the first Christians, who being persecuted re- 
sorted, for better security rather than as a new idea, to sub- 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



63 



terranean shelter — took refuge for a time only in the easily 
wrought Catacombs, not thinking of pictures or relievos, for 
they were not religious temples, but hiding-places for fugi- 
tives. 

We passed from the Catacombs of San Sebastiano to those 
of San Calixto. Through the former we were rapidly conduct- 
ed by a monk, who guided us, candle in hand, through the 
caverns, muttering prayers as he went along. In the latter 
we had a layman for a guide — much more intelligent, and 
much less hasty — who seemed better taught by his own expe- 
rience and less given to recitations. The darkness was pro- 
found and the silence unbroken. We descended from the 
busy scenes and storms of life to the deep shadows and the 
repose of death. The farther we advanced the more we were 
interested. If our guiding light had been extinguished, how 
could we have quitted the abyss ! And what repose, what 
stillness in that region of the dead ! The fugitives once hid- 
den there conquered the world. The doctrines there planted 
have for ages covered with their shadows altars and temples, 
feeding them with their vitality, and sustaining the human 
heart with the Christian's hope. 

Who that had seen the two as they once were — Christianity 
and Paganism — would not have said that the caverns were 
destined to disappear : and the greater — that structure raised 
in the air and light as the abode of pleasure and of vice — 
destined by its false brilliancy, by its apparent power, by its 
pretended strength, by the courtiers who encircled it, to en- 
dure for ages ! Yet the Caesars have departed, the senate 



6 4 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



crowned with laurels is no more. There were the soldiers 
with their burnished armor; the priests who were oracles of 
the past and prophets of the future ; the proud and wealthy 
nobles, the slaves of the circus, the gladiators, the triumphal 
arches, the colossal monuments ; the obelisks, witnesses of so 
many ages, and the spoil of so many battles ; while beneath 
all these lived an obscure and feeble sect, proclaiming a high- 
toned morality in the midst of the general depravity, and 
having for their only power — prayer ! for their only victory 
— martyrdom ! Above, the temples were magnificent ; sur- 
rounded with gardens and meadows, where innumerable birds 
sung in aviaries \ marble vestibules adorned with wondrous 
statues, where the cunning of the sculptor gave to the inert 
stone all the warmth and vitality of the soul ; museums for 
the preservation of the swords of the early heroes, and of the 
trophies they took in field and city ; while below, in the dark- 
ness — close to those wonders of history, close to those miracles 
of art — lay the sombre temple of Christian worship, entered 
like the dens of wild animals, and peopled by some humble 
figures symbolical of sorrow, pursued by despotic cruelty, and 
often tortured in drunken orgies ! 

Who could have predicted the triumph of these humble 
sectarians? One is astonished and terrified to see how they 
were ridiculed by the most admired writers of antiquity. Lu- 
cian has left among his immortal works the burlesque sketch 
of a Christian martyr named Peregrino. This unfortunate, 
according to him, fancied he was immortal, and having to live 
eternally, he despised earthly torments and desired death. As 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



65 



the crucified Founder of Christianity told his disciples that all 
men were brethren, they held their goods in common, and, 
victims of their own ignorance and folly, they fell into the 
hands of the most covetous or skillful. They crowned all 
these absurdities by dying in the flames ! 

After this bitter manner the reformers of the w 7 orld were 
judged by a writer of ability, a philosopher of elevated ideas, 
a satirist of the highest order, and one too who felt the in- 
difference to death common at that period, who might have 
known that the philosophers of Greek science and the gods 
of Pagan worship rather deserved his contempt, and who 
should have felt in his inmost soul the necessity of a reforma- 
tion. 

Then these fanatics in creed, superstitious by temperament, 
secluded in darkness, believers in the crucified Jesus, these 
insane preachers, these passionate sectarians — the feeble, the 
poor, the ignorant — were, after all, those summoned to awaken 
and to call down the living flame of the spirit on the intoxi- 
cated and corrupt world, which poisoned with its orgies and 
its vices not only the human conscience, but even material 
nature. 

What strength had they ? Arms ? Their word. What 
riches ? Their faith. What power ? That of resignation and 
suffering. Had they legions ? The legions of martyrs. Had 
they property? That of the tomb. What they really pos- 
sessed was a force which is unconquerable, a weapon that is 
never blunted, riches that can not be lost, possessions that 
can not be exhausted. The mysterious light without shadow, 



66 THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

and which grows not dim ; the living fire, which quickens and 
is not quenched; the immortal soul of nature, the acting 
spring of society, the air in w T hich the soul is free ; an unfail- 
ing faith bestowed on them by Heaven with the gift of mira- 
cles. The conquered were conquerors ; the proscribed be- 
came powerful ; the dead were givers of life ; the weak, w T ith 
hands pierced by the nails of the cross, vanquished the savage 
fierceness of barbarians. 

Such reflections must of necessity force themselves on those 
who wander through this immense labyrinth of subterranean 
passages. They are the furrows in which were planted the 
first germs of the Christian religion. There they w r ere long 
guarded from persecution, as the seed corn under the frost- 
bound earth in winter. From thence they sprung into life. 
The martyrs of a progressive idea fall, but rise again. The 
work they build is not interrupted, although it seems to our 
poor vision incapable of kindling the moral w r orld, as flame 
can kindle the material w r orld. We who respect all that has 
contributed to the education of humanity, children of this pre- 
eminently synthetical age, behold and admire the place where 
was contrived the great moral revolution against the excesses 
of ancient sensualism. The epigraphic signs, the half-effaced 
figures, the hieroglyphic sculpture on sepulchral stones, the 
holy images of those times, transport us to the ages of Chris- 
tian persecution. We seem to hear the religious psalmody 
half repressed by terror ; to behold the arrival of those w r ho 
brought the remains of the martyrs collected from the refuse 
of the circus, to deposit them in urns, and raise at their tomb 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



67 



the altar whereon burned the mystic lamp. We see painted 
in fresco and sculptured on stone the miraculous fish which 
represented the Saviour; anchors, symbols of hope; the crook 
and bag of the Good Shepherd ; the lamb resigned to the 
holocaust ; the ship of the Church defying all tempests ; the 
mystic vine whose roots and branches overspread the world ; 
the divine woman upon the waters of the sea, with her child in 
her arms and the star on her forehead ; the supper in which 
the eucharistical bread was divided among the primitive 
Christians — a frugal supper and one nourishing to the soul, 
a lively protest against the orgies of the empire ; the resurrec- 
tion of Lazarus, coming forth from the sepulchre rejuvenescent 
and beautified by the divine Word which fell on his moulder- 
ing flesh, and awakened it to a new life, as the evangelical 
doctrine kindled anew the old world. 

I can not enter into the artistic controversies which have 
so much excited those learned in Christian archaeology. I 
can not say, with M. Paul Rochette, if these paintings were 
the inspirations of ancient art, or if they sprung spontaneous- 
ly from the new faith, according to the Cavaliere Bossi and 
his French commentator, whom I have previously quoted. 
To me it has happened as to him — I did not see heaven, 
which Ozanan saw in the eyes of the worshipers. I did not 
perceive the spiritual expression of the paintings of the Mid- 
dle Ages in the frescoes of the Catacombs. I saw that the 
faces had something of the immovable impassibility of an- 
cient paintings. But it is observed that art is not in classic 
serenity, in that peculiarity of outline and perspective which 



68 THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 

gives it an Olympic character. Some drops of melted lead 
have warmed that flesh. Some lightning flashes have kindled 
those eyes. The forms are contracted by grief, and the lips 
sigh with sorrowful desire. These are the mysterious begin- 
nings from whence issued in after ages the Angels of Fiesole, 
the Martyrs of Fra Bartolomeo, the Conceptions of Murillo, 
the Virgins of Raphael. And the artist who studies these 
symbolical figures sees in them the first glory of the genealo- 
gy of modern art — of that pictorial art that we have added 
to the antique. 

Christians or philosophers devoted to the past or to the 
future, men of faith or of science, when you penetrate into 
that abyss, when you wander through that darkness, when 
you study those half-blotted frescoes, or touch those sacred 
relievos, you feel through your veins an emotion of terror al- 
ways produced by the sight of sublimity. 

I confess that all the religious sentiments and recollections 
of my childhood took possession of me, as if the first faith 
was still living. I remembered the humble church of my 
native village with its religious festivals ; the Virgin Mother 
among clouds of incense, and the melody of the organ ; the 
processions which came forth to bless the fields in the May 
mornings, when the poppy unfolded her petals among the 
corn, and the thorn-tree glowed with rosy blossoms ; the chant 
of the Litany repeated by many voices ; the sound of the bell 
floating in air and inviting to vespers, while the last splendors 
of day died over the mountains, and the first stars of the 
evening arose in the immensity of heaven. 



THE ROMAN CATACOMBS. 



69 



But when these emotions left space for reflection, I saw the 
power of a new belief which appeared at the expiration of 
the ancient worship. Such sentiments are experienced in go- 
ing through those subterranean caverns, where people seem 
to wander like moving corpses in immense pantheons. The 
obscurity and silence, if too much prolonged, fatigue, chill, and 
petrify. One wants the warm air and the light — above all, 
the light. And when we leave the Catacombs and breathe 
the atmosphere of the Roman Campagna, and see the sun 
flashing on the snows of the Apennines, and inhale the aro- 
ma of the dewy grass and the opening flowers, and listen to 
the chirp of the young birds which welcomes the maternal 
caress, while the swallow ascends in the pure sky, and the 
nightingale warbles in the groves — our hearts bless the benef- 
icence of Nature, which offers an eternal theatre to all trage- 
dies and infinite pages to the epochs of history. 



Chapter IV. 
THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 

Rome is a city of perpetual sadness. Her cypress groves 
murmur an elegy. Her fountains weep the death of her god. 
The moon shining on her marbles evokes pale and mournful 
shadows. Upon all sides there are heaps of ruins with their 
crowns of green nettles. There are traces of where a Titanic 
army has been in the dust of Rome beside her funereal urns. 
The gigantic stones, the Cyclopean walls, the colossal col- 
umns, are the bones of this race conquered by the bolts of 
heaven, annihilated by the vengeance of God. A volcano 
which for long ages has lain cold is less majestic in the ster- 
ile solitude of its crater than this dead Rome. Yet fossil 
bones incrusted in the mountains since the Deluge teach less 
than these bricks scattered in fragments, these stones with 
half-effaced inscriptions. 

All is desolate. The sepulchres are empty. Death has 
not forgiven the dead ashes. Nature, in her insatiable vorac- 
ity, has metamorphosed the bones fallen on her bosom. The 
dust of Caesar, of Scylla, of Cincinnatus, of Camillus, is per- 
haps whirling in the air, perhaps mingling with the frail and 
beautiful wings of a butterfly, or woven into the fibres of the 
grass which the wild goat divides with his sharp teeth. And 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. ?I 



notwithstanding — when they were grouped together in the 
frame, when the warm blood animated and gave them vigor 
and vitality — these atoms supported the weight of the heavens, 
ruled the world at their pleasure, and governed with a brittle 
sword the humanity which has long since mouldered away ! 

And what remains of all this ? Some handfuls of dust, 
heaped on other dust, among which have been lost Caesars 
and tribunes, conquerors and vanquished, Romans and bar- 
barians, masters and slaves, without weighing more in the 
balance of the universe and in the gravitation of the globe 
than other ashes. 

After a long time spent among ruins, one becomes accus- 
tomed to the inhabitants common to such places. You are 
not startled by the bird of night which hides in the crevice of 
a sepulchre ; nor at the bat issuing from a catacomb ; nor at 
the owl or the cuckoo sitting in the nocturnal solitude on the 
stones of the Coliseum. You like to meet the dwellers o"n 
the height. It is useless to search for them in a degenerate 
and submissive race. The worthy inhabitants of Rome are 
the men carved by the chisel in immortal marble. They are 
the figures designed and perfected by genius. And among 
these figures — those which yet retain the sacred fire on the 
forehead ; those which preserve the nervous contraction of 
awakened thought ; those which breathe a tempest from their 
colossal lungs ; those which look like gods, with a resem- 
blance to things earthly — are the statues of Michael Angelo. 

After the Genius of the Capitol had fallen in the dust a 
thousand years, lulled by the miseries of the Middle Ages, it 



72 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



shook off its heavy sleep and arose, flinging aside the mount- 
ains of ruins heaped upon its shoulders, and went to search 
for that Titan of art, Michael Angelo — solitary, unapproacha- 
ble, and sublime — to communicate to him the secrets of the 
chisel, and to invite him to dig under the walls of Catholic 
Rome for the remnants of Roman antiquity. They were pow- 
erful, robust, herculean, these Roman heroes : those strong 
lungs were needed to inhale a human spirit with their breath; 
those nervous arms to direct the war-horse — to pass as con- 
querors from Tigris to the shores of Betis. On those broad 
shoulders the earth reposed as on other Caryatides ; in that 
forced and almost impossible position they attacked Jerusa- 
lem and Alexandria ; their hands seem to brandish the lance 
with which they opened the veins of cities and ingrafted their 
people upon the native race, and the gigantic and slightly 
curved shoulders are those which drew the enormous burden 
of the conquered gods. 

These feelings were awakened by the sight of the Sistine 
Chapel, which I visited on my return from the Via Appia and 
the Via dei Sepolcri. In that temple of art, smoke-stained 
by tapers and incense, you see only colossal figures, and can 
neither comprehend the ideas nor personages represented. 
Strongly moved by my long walk between two or three 
leagues of tombs, I fancied I saw in the Alcides of the vault 
and in the various groups of the Last Judgment the spirits 
hidden in the ruins ; those souls which float above the stones 
over broken arches ; those souls wandering near the Forum, 
retenanting colossal and violent human bodies, as if shaken 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 73 

by the hurricane of the Last Day — all in due proportion and 
harmony with their historic greatness. The figures of Michael 
Angelo are antique heroes that have risen from the sepulchre! 

The Sistine Chapel takes its name from Sixtus IV. His 
pontificate was stormy and agitated. Machiavel learned 
some of his political intrigues from the conduct of Sixtus. 
He was the first who showed how immense was the political 
power of the Popedom, and, while exciting wars against the 
Italian magnates, was praised as the author of the Principe. 
In his time and at his instigation Julio de Medici was assas- 
sinated in Santa Maria dei Fiori, at Florence, when he was 
worshiping God at high mass. In revenge the Medici hung 
from a window the bishop appointed by the Pope for Pisa. 
The riches of Sixtus IV. were enormous, because they pro- 
ceeded from the sale of benefices. Pietro Riaria was a Car- 
dinal at the age of twenty-six, Patriarch of Constantinople, 
and Archbishop of Florence, and died satiated with gold, 
blood, and pleasure, like Balthazar or Sardanapalus. Con- 
tending parties fought at the gate of the Vatican, and stained 
with blood the steps of the altar of St. Peter's. But the Ro- 
man court increased its possessions, and raised churches with 
its riches. At this time licenses to pillage were granted to 
bandits for money, and a Lord Chamberlain said to Innocent 
VIII., who had bought the pontifical throne by simony, and 
who sold safe-conducts to robbers — "Your Holiness does 
well, for God wills not the death of a sinner, but rather that 
he should pay and live." 

But if the Sistine Chapel owes its name to Sixtus IV., it is 

D 



74 THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 

indebted for the marvelous decoration of the vault to Giulio 
II. This was the classic period of Italian horrors. If, as 
says Alfieri, man is born more robust in the Italian peninsula 
than in the rest of the world, his strength may be known by 
his crimes, for never did any country show greater. Pisa suc- 
cumbed among her marshes, after a resistance that had some- 
thing of the furious madness of suicide. A Duke of Genoa, 
raised from the plebeian class to the supreme dignity, was as- 
sassinated and quartered ; his members, divided among the 
enemy, were fixed as trophies upon the walls. Three thou- 
sand citizens were decapitated on the Prato, and the sanctity 
of the convents was outraged. The Venetian nobles were 
roasted to death in a cavern in Verona, the woods having 
been set on fire for that purpose. Nor did infants at the 
breast escape the slaughter. In those fearful times even the 
women turned cruel. A countrywoman of Tuscany cut off 
the head of a Spanish soldier who had robbed her house, and 
ran to present the bleeding trophy to her husband, believing 
her honor to be thus satisfied. The Swiss ravaged Milan ; 
the Germans Venetia ; the French Ravenna ; the Spaniards 
the rest of Italy. 

Gaston de Foix used to show his shirt red with Italian 
blood. Bayard exercised the terrible cruelties of the feudal 
ages. A way of springing mines was invented by Pedro Na- 
varro. Then the great captain gained his victories at the cost 
of terrible struggles. Italy was a field of slaughter. Lines 
of unburied corpses covered it from the defiles of the Abruzzos 
to those of the Alps. 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. y S 

But in the midst of all these horrors the genius which gov- 
erns and the voice that commands are those of Giulio II. 
Austere in his habits, an Italian in his inmost heart, formed 
by battles into the bronze of heroism ; clever and dexterous 
enough to be able to subtract or add to his calculations, like 
arithmetical figures, kings, emperors, and peoples ; gentle in 
his spiritual authority, because it served to maintain his polit- 
ical power ; implacable in his punishments as a priest of the 
Old Testament ; quick to make hostile incursions and to be- 
siege cities even amid the rigors of winter ; holding in one 
hand the spiritual thunderbolt ready to launch on the ene- 
mies of the Church, and in the other a match to fire cannons 
and drive the barbarians from Italy. 

There is certainly a resemblance between the temperament 
of Pope Giulio II. and that of the artist Michael Angelo. 
The one attempted to form by his wars a race of heroes who 
should be able to defend his country ; the other to draw from 
the bosom of the earth a race of Titans who should excite 
others to glory. He proposed to Giulio II. to erect his tomb 
after this fashion : A mountain of bronze and marble, broad 
at the base, and with an elevated pedestal ; a staircase and 
richly sculptured cornices ; several genii in those violent and 
virile but harmonious attitudes of which he alone knew the 
secret, supporting the cornices on their heads, and having 
the nations in chains under their feet. The Arts and the 
Virtues were represented by beautiful women, weeping and 
wringing their hands in sorrow. Over the four corners of the 
first cornice were active and contemplative life — Saint Paul, 



76 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

whose word is a sword, and that Moses who almost appals us, 
and whose face flashes with the lightnings of Sinai. Below 
are trophies, tributes of nature and recollections of history. 
Cybele, the earth, holding a winding-sheet with the attitude 
of a Madre Dolorosa who embraces the crucified Lord lying 
on her loving bosom, and looking to Urania, the heavens, who 
smilingly links the soul of the Pope, like another star, to the 
choir of his blessed souls ! 

Michael Angelo went to search out the best marbles of the 
mountains, and returned well supplied with huge blocks suit- 
ed to his purpose. Then he took his hammer and chisel, 
and commenced to break and plane the pure material, seek- 
ing — with breathless eagerness and extreme effort, among a 
shower of stones which started upward at his blows — the im- 
age already formed in his own imagination. But when he 
was engaged in his herculean labor, envy sought to destroy 
him. Bramante, a genius of that unnatural age, desired his 
ruin. The one chiefly an architect, the other mainly a sculp- 
tor, each should have endeavored to perfect himself — not to 
injure the other. 

The grandiose statues of Michael Angelo appear to the 
greatest advantage under the bold arches of Bramante. There 
— between those broad lines, under those prodigious curves, 
placed in one of those courts, or near one of the great tem- 
ples where the perspective is incomplete — the statues of Mi- 
chael -Angelo display their tragic attitudes, their gigantic 
members, which seem animated by a ray from the Divinity, 
and struggling to mount from earth to heaven. Bramante and 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEI. 77 

Michael Angelo detested but completed each other. Thus 
it is often in human nature. Those two men knew not that 
they were laborers in the same work. And history is silent 
on such points till death has passed over her heroes. Armies 
have fought till they have been almost annihilated on the 
field of battle ; men have hated and injured one another by 
their calumnies ; the learned and powerful persecute and seek 
to blot their fellows from the earth, as if there was not air 
and space for all j they know not, blinded by their passions 
and warped by the prejudices of envy, that the future will 
blend them in the same glory, that to posterity they will repre- 
sent but one sentiment ; friends and enemies will alike leave 
traces of their footsteps among the arts, and all distinct per- 
sonality is but a laborer employed to erect this immense se- 
ries of triumphal arches called ages ; and all individual intel- 
ligence is a facet of the prism called human genius, which 
disperses in a thousand varieties the divine light in which the 
universe is floating. Society is like nature. Evil is in the 
circumstantial, in the fortuitous, in the limited \ but it disap- 
pears in the combined, in the universal, in the eternal. Thus 
it appears that in certain ages all individuals seem perverse, 
all people blind, all actions sinful. Here we perceive a mon- 
ster, there a slaughter, yonder a superstition ; and afterward, 
when the genius of the age succeeds in separating itself from 
old prejudices, new opinions arise like beneficent clouds of 
consoling dew, refreshing the atmosphere and sustaining the 
world with new life and energy. 

And the same holds good with regard to the universe. 



7 8 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

Lightning, poison, pestilence, and catastrophes are accidents 
which never perturb the serenity of the great whole \ the eter- 
nal light of Cosmos changes not for any inequalities on the 
bosom of nature. The viper stings a man, but it can not poi- 
son all humanity. Death cuts off the individual, but it does 
not destroy the species. I have ever revolted against the 
cruel belief in the eternity of evil. And I have always com- 
bated another idea not less terrible — that of complete death 
and the total annihilation of consciousness. We shall resolve 
these antinomies hereafter. All contradictions will be rec- 
onciled by death. Bramante and Michael Angelo, enemies 
during life, are reconciled in immortality. 

Let us follow the history of the Sistine Chapel. Bramante 
urged upon Giulio II. the desirability of intrusting Michael 
Angelo with the frescoes of the vault. But the great sculptor 
did not yet feel himself sufficiently acquainted with fresco 
painting, and he frankly said so to his Holiness. The latter 
would not allow any contradiction, refused to tolerate disobe- 
dience, or to listen to the best of all reasons — the impossibil- 
ity of performing the desired task. 

This affair was a great trouble to Michael Angelo, because, 
close to the Sistine Chapel, -Raphael was painting the Cham- 
bers of the Vatican with his usual calmness and self-posses- 
sion in difficulties. The first sculptor of his age ran the risk 
of being the second painter. This thought wounded his van- 
ity, but did not dishearten him. Finding that resistance to 
the Pope would be his ruin, he sent for the best Florentine 
fresco painters, learned from them the principles of their art, 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL, 



79 



and dismissed them. Then he shut himself up alone in the 
chapel, contemplating that immense vault, lofty, dark, and emp- 
ty, like chaotic space before the creation. He commenced to 
people it. On attentively observing the figures, a strange re- 
flection makes them seem as if they had been painted by light- 
ning. They look as if they had issued from the flashes of a 
tempest, and been produced from the fury of a giant. Lips 
have been sketched to breathe a lamentation of Jeremiah, a 
stanza of Dante, a malediction of the Prometheus of ^Eschylus. 

The soul of Raphael produced his figures without effort — 
as it is said the Virgin was delivered without pain. Each of 
them seems to have been born like Cytherea from the foam of 
the ocean, in a pearly shell, with a smile upon the lips, the 
rays of Aurora on the head, and heaven in the eyes. They 
have been raised by a gentle wave and left on the rude shores 
of reality. The figures of Michael Angelo struggle, turn, suf- 
fer — are mounted on the blast of the hurricane ; they have for 
light a conflagration ; they express all the intensity and power 
of sorrow — they are the giant offspring of the extreme despair 
of genius in delirium, desirous of marking reality with the 
stamp of infinity. They all seem to carry in the flesh the 
burning iron of the artist's idea, and cry hopelessly, like the 
shipwrecked for the land, from the world that is visible and 
finite to that which is unseen and everlasting. 

It is necessary to comprehend all the troubles which tore 
the heart of Michael Angelo while pursuing his work. Ra- 
phael is always sustained by his innamorata who loved him, 
by his disciples who obeyed him — surrounded by a choir of 



80 THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 

angels \ but the great sculptor was alone, separated from the 
world, reduced to a perpetual companionship with his own 
ideas, without love and without friendship, isolated as a 
mountain with the tempest beating on its summit. After 
having studied the first rudiments of the art, he essayed the 
commencement of his wonderful composition. His colors 
mingle, the paintings fall asunder. He flies to Giulio II. to 
beg he would free him from his promise. The Pope insisted 
on its performance. San Gallo, a painter, suggested to him 
an easy way of avoiding the difficulty. Up to this time the 
scaffold constructed by Bramante was suspended to the roof 
by cords. At each extremity of his work, which was like a 
bundle of rags, the scaffold was unsteady. In place of this, 
Michael Angelo, by the advice of San Gallo, made another, 
which was quite fixed and secure. Then he sketched the 
heavens which were to contain his figures. But when he had 
so much space he was overcome by despair, from the fear of 
being unable to fill it. He locked the chapel door, and 
rushed out to wander alone, like a madman, in the Roman 
Campagna. The broken arches and aqueducts, resembling 
giant skeletons; the ruined masses where the shepherd rested, 
and up whose rugged sides goats clambered ; the Apennines 
with their snowy summits, and slopes dotted with monuments; 
the cypress groves, pine-trees, and willows, which give the 
country the aspect of the largest cemetery ever seen by man ; 
the lagunes, covered with rushes, and crossed by wild buffaloes 
and by melancholy looking boats, occupied by beings who 
seemed like the dead revisiting the earth ; sepulchres gilded 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



by the sun's rays, like fragments of shattered planets fallen 
amid the desolation ; fantastic clouds like evaporations from 
ashes ; volcanoes in the brightness of the desert, more replete 
with interest than peopled cities — such a spectacle must 
strengthen and invigorate the mind, and enable it to produce 
something superior to human power, something sublime. 

But it was essential that he should abandon himself to soli- 
tude and his inspiration. Time is the great helper of the artist. 
Against his inspiration, against his solitude, against his time, 
the impatience of the Pope was exerted. He was aged, and 
he ardently desired to see the work completed before his 
death. Three great works Michael Angelo had been com- 
pelled to perform or invent for Giulio II. — his sepulchre, his 
statue, and the vault of the Sistine Chapel. The tomb was 
stopped on account of its difficulty and costliness. The 
bronze statue, erected in a square at Bologna, was melted 
clown and converted by the Bolognese into a piece of artillery. 
They called it Giuliana, and discharged it against the Papal 
party. These having failed, the Sistine Chapel was all that 
remained to him for glory. Leaning on his crosier, the Pope 
would enter to interrupt, torment, or hasten the artist. Michael 
Angelo at one time let fall a board at his feet. " Do you 
know that I should have been killed had it struck my head ?" 
cried the Pontiff. " Your Holiness will avoid all accidents by 
not coming here to distract me," expostulated the painter. 
Giulio II. took the hint and departed. But a* few days after, 
when the artist was still more absorbed in his wonderful crea- 
tion, the Pope re-appeared. "When will you finish it?" he 

D 2 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



asked. " When I am able/'' replied Michael Angelo, covering 
his figures with a thick black veil, which shrouded the whole 
of the vault. 

On another occasion, so great was the impatience of the 
Pontiff to see the progress of the work, that he went into the 
chapel, and, in spite of Michael Angelo, mounted, with great 
difficulty, the steps of the scaffold. The painter contrived to 
get between the Pope and the painting. Some authors say 
that the latter then designedly let fall his crosier on the ribs 
of the artist. (It is certain that he once caned his valet for 
saying that Michael Angelo was half mad, like all painters.) 
He immediately descended from the scaffold, flung away his 
pencils, rushed to his house, mounted his horse, and fled from 
Rome. But deeply enamored with his work, which now began 
to start out of chaos, he soon returned to finish it. The Pope 
would certainly have had him taken on the road, or would 
have declared war against any city which harbored him with- 
out his sovereign consent, as, at another time, he was on the 
point of making war upon Florence, in which town the artist 
had taken refuge on flying from the Pontifical displeasure. 
At last it appeared — that work, not for an age, but for hu- 
manity. The Renaissance had found its representative. It 
was the age of the great growth of man. The mariner's com- 
pass grew in the ocean ; painting grew on the land ; the dis- 
covery of America grew in our planet ; philosophy grew in 
the human mind ; the classic arts re-appeared and grew in 
history ; the telescope grew in the heavens ; and all grew in 
the love of God. 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



83 



Would you like to see how the world has grown ? Do you 
desire to measure her stature ? Then compare the measured 
and rigid figures — narrow-chested, meagre, and lustreless — 
left by Fra Angelico in Florence as the testament of the Middle 
Age, with those bold, athletic, gigantic, and herculean figures 
left by Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel — the glory of the 
Renaissance. 

Imagine a vast plane ceiling, lighted by twelve windows, 
and divided from the side walls by a cornice. Time, the 
smoke of the incense, and the waxen tapers have toned it to a 
duskiness which increases its mystery. They do not seem 
pictures ; from the powerful incarnation, from the prominence 
of the design, from the relief of the figures, they appear sculp- 
tures. It is the apotheosis of the renewed human body. On 
the frieze of the cornice and over the windows, stretched out, 
on foot, and in improbable attitudes and positions, are vigor- 
ous undr*aped athletics, with nerves vibrating as the strings 
of a harp, and with fibres hardened by gymnastic exercises ; 
beautiful youths who have fought for Rome on battle-fields, or 
who, turning to the classic shores of Greece, have guided the 
car with its four coursers in the Olympic games. The genius 
of Michael Angelo called again upon earth the heroes of past 
ages ; converted stones into men ; and, audaciously scaling the 
summit of Catholic Rome, as if it was the ancient Olympus, 
celebrated with rapture a new existence and a new era — the 
resurrection of gods, philosophers, poets, of the arts — and of 
his country ! 

Here classical reminiscences are concluded. The remain- 



84 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

der of the roof has neither precedent nor sequence. It re- 
mains there, fixed on the human mind, like the first verses of 
the Bible, or as the isolated peaks of Mount Sinai, of Calvary, 
or the Capitol, in the plains of history. There are sibyls and 
prophets. The former come from Delphi, Cumae, Erythraea, 
Libya ; after having collected among the oaks of Dodona, on 
the shores of the iEgean and Tyrrhene seas, from the grottoes 
of Posilippo, or the gulfs of Corinth and of Baiae, the prophe- 
cies, the hopes, the promises of redemption which poets have 
expressed in their verses and philosophers in their discourses. 
The prophets come from the desert, from Mount Carmel, from 
the caves of Jerusalem, from the primitive groves of Lebanon ; 
after having collected the consolatory hopes of the priesthood, 
they unite with the sibyls in the Sistine Chapel as two Titanic 
choirs, whose combined strength supports the roof from which 
issue these marvelous paintings, unique from their size, from 
the scriptural allegories and tragedies they so admirably depict. 
Chaos submerged in shadows ; the first light dawning over 
the waters; Adam sleeping profoundly; Eve newly created, 
awakening in the ecstasy of love and enchantment with the 
life she beholds blooming around — the life she breathes and 
absorbs with delight; the first sin committed in the world, de- 
priving the first human pair of Paradise, and the first sorrow 
w T hich burdened the heart, robbing it of peace and innocence; 
the Deluge whirling its green waters of bitterness crossed by 
the lightning, and swelled by the hurricane up to the heights 
where the last men climb to save themselves in the extremity 
of desolation and despair; the sacrifice of Noah on the mount- 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



85 



ain as a sign of the perpetuity of nature and of the salvation of 
the species ; — all grouped, all united — giants, sibyls, prophets, 
storms, hurricanes, floods — around that majestic and sublime 
figure of the Eternal Father, who animates and invigorates all 
these creatures by His creating breath, governing them by His 
powerful and protecting hand, and irradiating their minds by 
a ray from His own omniscience ! 

After examining the combination, let us go into particulars. 
How wonderful is each of these figures ! One can not com- 
prehend how the poor genius of man has performed so much. 
I have seen artists, in mute contemplation before these fres- 
coes, let fall their arms in astonishment, and shake their heads 
in desperation, as if saying, " Never can we copy this !" The 
three fates whom Goethe saw in a cavern holding the thread 
of life are less sublime than these sibyls. The giants of the 
Bible and of classic poetry are inferior to these prophets. 
Isaiah is reading the book of human destiny. His cerebrum 
is like the curve of a celestial sphere, an urn of ideas, as the 
tops of high mountains are the crystal sources from which de- 
scend great rivers. The angel calls him, and without drop- 
ping his book, he slowly raises his head toward heaven, as if 
suspended between two infinities. Jeremiah wears the sack- 
cloth of the penitent, which suits the prophet wandering near 
Jerusalem. His lips vibrate like a conqueror's trumpet. His 
beard falls in wavy masses upon his breast. His head is in- 
clined like the crown of a cedar struck by the lightning. His 
melancholy eyes overflow with tears. His hands are vigorous, 
but swelled by bearing the tottering stones of the sanctuary. 



86 THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 

He is thinking of the complaint and the elegies of the Chil- 
dren of Israel, captives by the waters of Babylon, and the piti- 
ful lamentation of the Queen of Nations, solitary and desolate 
as a widow. 

Ezekiel is transported; his spirit possesses him. He speaks 
with his visions as if occupied with a divine delirium. Invis- 
ible monsters hover around and shake their wings in his hear- 
ing, producing apparently a violent tempest like the roaring 
and surging of the ocean. The sea-breeze fills his mantle as 
if it were a sail. Daniel is himself; absolutely absorbed in 
writing, relating to the world the history of the chastisement 
of tyrants, and the hopes and happiness of the good ; the pun- 
ishment of Nebuchadnezzar — changed from a god into a 
beast; the crime and punishment of Belshazzar, surprised by 
death in the midst of the orgy where he feasted his concu- 
bines, giving them wine in the cups stolen from the sacred 
temple ; the condemnation of the courtiers of Darius, devour- 
ed in the pit by hungry lions. After this a space of seventy 
periods of years passes ; at the end of which, according to the 
prediction of the angel Gabriel, will appear a humble youth, 
clothed in white linen, who shall awaken with his sword the 
dead sleeping in the dust of ages, and make the firmament 
glorious with a new splendor. Jonah is terrified, as, rising 
from the bosom of the sea to go into the desert, he watches 
the fate of the great city of Nineveh. Zachariah is the most 
aged of the group. He staggers, as if the ground was rent 
under his feet by the trembling of the earthquake announced 
in his last prophecy. 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



87 



What is most admirable about those colossal figures — and 
this we can never weary of admiring — is, that not only are 
they decorations of a hall, the adornments of a chapel, but 
men — men who have suffered our sorrows and experienced 
our disappointments; whom the thorns of the earth have 
pierced ; whose foreheads are furrowed by the wrinkles of 
doubt, and whose hearts are transfixed by the chill of dis- 
enchantment; men who have seen battles and beheld the 
slaughter of their fellows; who have looked on tragedies where 
generations are consumed, and who see falling on their brows 
the damp of death, while seeking to prepare by their efforts 
a new society; whose eyes are worn and almost blind from 
looking continually at the movable and changing glass of 
time, and at humanity exhausted by the slow fire of ideas; 
men whose powerful and concentrated nerves support the 
weight of their great souls ; and upon the souls the still great- 
er burden of aspirations which admit not of realization; of 
impossible dreams and of painful struggles without victory; 
with no satisfaction on the earth, but with boundless desires 
for the infinite. 

I should like to define these figures. For all that in them 
approaches humanity in respect to form and organization, 
they are really superhuman. All those gigantic and extraor- 
dinary beings which the various cosmogonies assume to have 
sprung from the first fruitfulness of the newly created planet, 
teeming with life and expansion — all of them are believed to 
have been of gigantic stature. But for all that they possess 
of spirit or durability, all are alike human, all the offspring of 



88 THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 

those two elements of our existence which have produced so 
much grandeur — aspiration for the infinite and sorrow for 
reality, against which the soul is in perpetual warfare, against 
which it ever dashes despairingly, longing vainly to diffuse it- 
self in the invisible, in immensity, in the mysterious, and re- 
turns baffled to fall upon its narrow bed of clay with sighs 
and trembling. 

The humanitarian, conciliatory, and universal spirit of the 
sixteenth century is seen in these sibyls of Paganism, who are 
raised to the level of the prophets, placed side by side with 
them, repeating the same sentiments, declaring the same 
truths, like two separate choirs, whose voices and canticles 
blend in harmony and are confounded in the heavens. The 
same union takes place in the laboratory of the atmosphere, 
where the vapors exhaled from distant seas are mingled, just 
as the electric fluid leaps from mountain to mountain ! 

How remote and barbarous seem those iconoclasts who de- 
stroyed the beautiful statues of the gods, believing them to 
be representations of the Devil ! How distant we feel from 
that narrow spirit which condemned ancient history, thinking 
it worn-out and useless ! The sibyls are the oracles of Pa- 
ganism. When night has flung her shadowy mantle over the 
earth, and the Pleiades issue from the sea ; when the waves, 
beautified by phosphoric splendors, die on the sandy shore ; 
under the branches of mystery, on the stones embrowned by 
ages, clothed with a white tunic, floating as a cloud and 
crowned with vervain ; the kindling altar in front, the idol 
raised on her shoulder ; the people motionless around, the 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



89 



citharas of the maidens sounding in her ears, her eyes fixed 
on heaven and her hand on her heart ; all the nerves agitated, 
and the soul delirious with emotion — the sibyl tells her orac- 
ular secrets in mystic verses, collected from leaves and con- 
fided to the mercy of the wind ; she there discovers the shad- 
ow of the future, and forcibly wrenches the embryo of the 
hereafter from the womb of future ages yet sleeping in the 
abyss of eternity ! 

St. Augustine read the mysterious books of these women. 
In his enthusiasm he acted like Michael Angelo — he placed 
them in the city of God. They predicted the coming of the 
Saviour. "Pertinent ad civitatem dei" he exclaimed. It was 
these same sibyls who, before Csesar, according to a pious le- 
gend, descended from the marble altar, because the hope of 
nations had been born, and the prophecies of ages had been 
accomplished. Virgil deserved that St. Geronimo, after hav- 
ing saluted the birthplace of Christ in Bethlehem, should pay 
similar honor to his sepulchre at Posilippo. He deserved 
more ; he deserved that St. Augustine should count him 
among the highest witnesses in favor of Christianity, among 
those men of learning who drove away his doubts and forti- 
fied his faith. " I would not so easily believe all this, if it had 
not been long foretold by a noble poet in the Roman lan- 
guage." He also deserved that the great poet of the Middle 
Ages should invoke him, exclaiming, 

"Per te ficeta fui, per te Christiano" 
And all because Virgil repeated the oracle of the Sibyl of 



9 o THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

Cumae ; the advent of a mystic child, before whose presence 
the order of the ages would be changed, and nature would 
lose her evils, the lion his ferocity, the serpent his venom, the 
fields their thorns, labor its weariness ; and without the ne- 
cessity of eating bread in the sweat of his brow, man would be 
satisfied with the produce of the fields, the vine by a natural 
process bringing forth grapes, the corn its ears, the trees their 
fruits, the hills be crowned with flowers, the fleeces of the 
sheep dyed with the colors of the rainbow, the sting taken 
from the bee, whose honey would be left upon the lips ; and 
the universe, as a tree waved by the celestial zephyr, should 
intone a sublime canticle which would make men forgetful of 
the music of the flute of Pan and the melodies of Orpheus, 
being the incommunicable hymn of the new age of justice! 

It is true that history, in its modern universality, has de- 
stroyed and overcome many hatreds. The Romans and the 
barbarians, that fought furiously as irreconcilable enemies up 
to the latter part of the ancient period, were brothers, children 
of the same race. And those prophets of Jerusalem, those 
insatiable readers of the future, those invincible enemies of ty- 
rants ; those mysterious sibyls, wandering over the sands of 
Libya, by the ruins of Persia, by the sea of Ionia, by the grot- 
toes of Cumae, appearing in the extremity of the Grecian 
Archipelago and at the Cape of Messina, like disembodied 
spirits to tell of ideas without substance ; those philosophers 
who have passed the Piraeus from the great Greece, and from 
the Piraeus have traveled to Alexandria, sowing between the 
East and the West a track of ideas which have been the nur- 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 9I 

sery-books of the world ; and the sublime and obscure mis- 
sionaries, not understood by Imperial Rome, who went from 
the Catacombs to the Circus, leaving with the blood of their 
veins the immortal stream which watered the faith; all ene- 
mies for ages, all mutually unknown, all separated by chasms, 
prejudices, and hatreds, all are united in the Infinite that has 
formed our spirit and kindled our religious conscience ! 

How sublime are the sibyls of the Sistine Chapel ! How 
our eyes and our thoughts turn from one to the other without 
being able to fix themselves. These figures appear to be the 
mothers of ideas, the embodiment of eternal beings. Any 
one would say they hold in their fingers the thread of univer- 
sal life, and that they weave the web of nature. They are 
the Persian, the Erythraean, the Delphian, the Libyan, the Cu- 
maean. If you search for their genealogies, you must find 
Dante, Plato, Isaiah, and ^Eschylus ; they are of the same 
race. If you seek for their resemblances in the modern 
world, you will have them in some of Shakespeare's person- 
ages, in some thoughts of Calderon, in some scenes of Cor- 
neille. There, in some respects, you will find their counter- 
parts. 

Read and study many treatises on the sublime, and then 
draw near to understand this grand conception. It is difficult 
to explain a certain cold shuddering that is only experienced 
twice or thrice in a lifetime ; it is hard to comprehend an 
idea of which there are only half a dozen examples in history. 
But raise your eyes to the roof of the Sistine Chapel : there 
is the sublime, there the disproportion between our feeble be- 



9 2 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

ing and the wonderful power of an impression which over- 
comes us, that crushes and annihilates us under its immeas- 
urable grandeur ! This is the sublime : an enjoyment in a 
punishment. 

Sibyl of Persia ! bowed by the weight of ages, thou remem- 
berest how the infant world confided to thee her secrets and 
confessed her sorrows, and how before death, oppressed by 
years and labor, thou didst desire to write a cyclical poem on 
the leaves of thy brazen book ! Thou of Libya ! who comes 
upon us, rushing as if the scorching sand of the desert burned 
thy feet — to bring to man some great idea, gathered in space, 
where all ideas are transformed like mysterious larvae. Ery- 
thraa ! thou wert youthful as Greece, beautiful as one of the 
sirens of thy Archipelago, a songstress sweet as the earth of 
the poets, undulating and graceful as the seas which bring 
forth divinities, the friend of light, and trimming the lamp by 
thy side round whose brilliancy the human conscience shall 
hover as a butterfly ! Maiden of Cumae ! virgin, like Iphige- 
nia, immolated for kings, thou didst receive the kiss of Apollo 
upon thy lips, the shadow of the laurel on thy brow, the im- 
mortality of genius in thy bosom ; thou wert formed to intone 
a song of harmony which should vibrate through countless 
ages ! Thou, Sibyl of Delphi, leavest thy cavern, and there 
where the mountains are chiseled as if by the hand of a sculp- 
tor, where the air is filled with aroma, where the Tyrrhene 
Sea is most lovely, near the Gulf of Baiae, looking like a Gre- 
cian goddess, and intoxicated as a Bacchante reclining on 
her couch of vine leaves, breathest the soft melody of hope ! 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 93 

Are ye of flesh ? Are ye women ? Have ye felt love, sor- 
row, and disappointment? Or are ye but the archetypes of 
things, the symbols of art, the shades of the muses invoked 
by all the poets, and that none have beheld but in unrealized 
and impossible visions the various forms of the eternal Eve 
— named alternately Sappho, Beatrice, Laura, Victoria Colon- 
na, Heloise — and who stand by the cradle and the tomb of 
all ages, smiling to us hopefully, awakening in us new aspira- 
tions, or flying to our arms as an illusion soon vanishing in 
the infinite. 

This roof of the Sistine Chapel will always excite poetical 
imaginations. One of the most learned men in Europe has 
said that he spent thirty years in studying it. When Michael 
Angelo finished the painting he could not cast down his eyes 
for a moment without their being obscured — he had been so 
long in the habit of raising his head and looking upward. 
He met the object of his sight in the heavens. There, even 
to the heavens, he directed his gaze, his mind filled with 
boundless aspirations and with infinite sorrow. And this 
man, with so lively a sensibility, with so harsh and bitter a 
temper, with thoughts so extraordinary and tempestuous, 
lived in the period of the most violent changes, of the strong- 
est contrasts, as the human spirit passes from sad discourage- 
ments to exuberant existence, from dark eclipses to sudden 
illuminations, from repentance to the orgy, from sensuality to 
faith, inclining, like a drunken man, sometimes to one side, 
sometimes to the other. 

Let us imagine a body suddenly translated from the torrid 



94 THE SISTINE CHAPEL, 

zone to the pole, from earth to heaven, from the peak of a 
mountain to an abyss, from the stormy sea to a downy couch, 
and perhaps we shall be able to form some conception of the 
changes to which the soul of Michael Angelo was exposed by 
the contradictions of his time. The Luzbel of the Bible, 
passing from angelical to diabolical nature, and the Luzbel 
of Origen, turning from the things of earth to those of heav- 
en, may give some distant idea of the sudden transformations 
which that age experienced, and through which that man 
passed, who was steeped in the life of his century. 

This division of ages is by no means arbitrary. History is 
like an almanac of the spirit; in a hundred years ideas rad- 
ically alter, their essence changes, and the aspect of society 
varies considerably. In a hundred years the atoms of a peo- 
ple are renewed with the renovation of generations. Each 
age is a great personality engraved by anterior ages. The 
sword is often a chisel which obeys a conscience, and an un- 
known or misunderstood spirit. All ages have a philosophy 
peculiar to themselves. But the age that Michael Angelo 
filled with his large existence is the most contradictory of all 
ages. If at each alternate minute it grew light and dark, 
perhaps we should have in nature a resemblance of the time 
of Michael Angelo ; that is to say, of that period in which the 
Middle Ages were concluded and the Modern Age began. 

Constantinople fell ; but the wounded Venice increased, 
and in all her power navigated a vessel closely covered at the 
sides by painted canvas, to obstruct the sight of the enemy, 
which flung a cable into the Adriatic to keep Europe and the 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 



95 



East united. The gods of the ancients were reborn, reveal- 
ing in their frames of marble all the secrets of the sculptor's 
art, and the works of artists were burned in bonfires, stirred 
by a population of monks in the Piazza de Firenze. The 
Perugino Convent still preserved the penitents and the mor- 
tifications of the cloister, and the Farnese Hercules was 
erected on Roman soil to show all the force and power of 
antiquity. Ariosto wrote his sensual work — in which the he- 
roes dance as in a brilliant carnival, and dream in delicate 
language the Platonics of Florence, with mysterious senti- 
ments, with heaven concealed behind the sepulchre, and God 
hidden from the world. Savonarola, that political Francois 
d'Assis, invokes saints and angels, recommends fasting and 
penance, renews the imitation of Jesus Christ; summons 
Machiavel the Demon, calls up traitors, advises imposition, 
crime, and assassination, and restores the likeness of the Cae- 
sars. The Florentine people selected for their chief the 
Crucified, while the Romans chose Caesar Borgia, handsome, 
but vicious and infamous, a traitor, and stained with the 
blood of his brother and brother-in-law, which splashed his 
forehead, and that of the Pope, degraded by orgies like those 
of Nero, reproducing the erotic delirium of Heliogabalus in 
conjunction with the slaughterings and poisonings of Tibe- 
rius. 

These all pass and depart like shadows, and the French 
come from the North and support the Guelphs, and the 
Spaniards from the South to support the Ghibelines. The 
political power of the Popes and the political power of the 



9 6 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

Emperors seem over and past, but the Pontificate appears 
renewed with increased vigor by Giulio II., and imperial 
power becomes more brilliant under Charles V. The spirit- 
ual authority of the Middle Ages re-asserts and restores itself 
through the medium of its arts and artists, who support the 
Vatican, converted by Leo X. into Olympus, when suddenly, 
at the voice of Luther, the blood in the veins of Rome is fro- 
zen. On all sides the plebeians arise to save or to renovate 
republics, and on all sides monarchies are restored. The 
arts, by which Michael Angelo wished to unite liberty, are 
the fatal circle, the brilliant talisman with which tyrants lull 
and tranquilize the people. Patriots seek a Brutus and 
scarcely find a Lorencino ! 

On this account Michael Angelo did not desire to finish 
his bust of the defender of the Roman Republic in unworthy 
Florence, given up to the Medicis. In that age cities surren- 
dered themselves, falling in the dust, with their own sword in 
their bosoms, before the conqueror. The disgrace of Chaero- 
nea was repeated a hundred times, and a hundred Athens, 
steeped in gore, died on Italian ground. Ancona gave up 
her fortresses, to free them from the threatened invasion of 
the Turks, and they fell under the dominion of monks. The 
Popes converted all into Ghibelines, contradicting their pre- 
vious history. Spain, which had sent Jews and Moors to 
serve in Rome, pillaged the city herself. The numerous rev- 
olutions which occurred in Italy from the tenth to the six- 
teenth century, and the fourteen millions of men fallen on 
her fields of battle, produced confusion and chaos. Can you 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 97 

not — when thinking over all this — can you not comprehend 
why the Moses of Michael Angelo looks on his time with so 
much disdain ? Do you not understand why the colossal Jer- 
emiah in the Sistine Chapel mourns with such a heart-rend- 
ing lamentation ? 

But the greatest of all catastrophes drew nigh when Mi- 
chael Angelo had finished the vault of the chapel — I 
mean the sacking of Rome by the Spaniards and Germans 
under the command of the High -Constable Bourbon. The 
Spaniards, deprived of their pay, suffered greatly from fam- 
ine. Religious fury took possession of the Germans, enemies 
of the Pope. The Spanish general brought with him a chain, 
and intended to cut off the head of the Catholic high-priest 
the day he should enter into the city, which he called sacri- 
legious Babylon. The High -Constable wished to teach a 
terrible lesson to Clement VII., the enemy of his new master 
Charles V. 

Rome had been restored by eighty years of artistic labor — 
reclothed with marble, painted by Raphael and his disciples, 
covered with statues which seemed to arise by enchantment 
from the ruins, enriched by Leo X. with all the ornaments of 
the Renaissance, filled with treasures by the people, who 
crowded as pilgrims to kiss his brazen slipper, to worship in 
his religious sepulchres, in his admirable temples ; full of 
palaces erected by a wealthy and powerful aristocracy, she 
had reconquered her ancient fame, and shone in all her spir- 
itual splendor, with as much glory as she had formerly done 
among the spoils of the world. Her great riches excited the 

E 



98 THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 

cupidity of the Spaniards and the Germans, all of them war- 
riors by profession, and consequently all of them addicted to 
pillage, then considered the proper harvest of the sword. 
Thus it was in vain to make a truce. Those twenty-five 
thousand men, Italian adventurers, Spaniards, by profession 
soldiers, German Protestants, drew onward, marching to- 
ward Rome, with the voracious hunger of the legions of 
Attila, of those birds of prey darting from the pole on the 
corpse of ancient Rome. 

It was a morning in the month of May, 1527. The High- 
Constable demanded a passage for Naples; the Pope re- 
fused. The assault followed the refusal. The Spaniards 
wavered, but their generalissimo, the High -Constable, placed 
with his own hands the ladder against the wall of the Holy 
City. An archer took aim and killed him. In his death 
agony he covered himself with a Spanish mantle, in order 
that he should not be recognized, and so cause panic among 
his soldiers. The Spaniards entered by the walls near St. 
Peter's, the Germans by the gate of Santo Spirito, the Ital- 
ians by the gate of San Pancrazio, like three torrents which 
rush together and mingle their waters in the same bed. The 
Pope had barely time to pass from the Vatican to San Ange- 
lo, under a shower of bullets, and Pablo Jovio flung over him 
a violet-colored robe, in order that the white Pontifical gar- 
ments should not serve as a mark for the enemy's musketry. 
It seemed — so great was the turmoil — as if Genseric and 
Alaric — as if the Goths and Vandals had arisen to trouble 
the city. Here they fought hand to hand, there the houses 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 99 

were in flames, in every part slaughter and pillage ! Some 
cut the fingers from the bodies of the vanquished to tear off 
their rings ; many who were consecrated to the service of the 
Lord were outraged on the altars. Many of the Roman 
women were cut to pieces to satisfy the blood-thirsty passions 
of the invaders. Young maidens threw themselves into the 
arms of their fathers and brothers, tearfully imploring death 
rather than dishonor. The night increased the horrors of the 
bloody saturnalia. By the light of torches the plunderers 
hacked down the pictures ; filled sacks with the ornaments, 
profaned the sanctuaries in searching for precious stones; 
celebrated their victory by drinking wine out of the sacred 
chalices; beat and spit upon the cardinals; surmounted 
their military casques with mitres; clothed the cantinieres 
with the robes of the Virgin ; pronounced ridiculous and pro- 
fane sermons, standing defiantly on heaps of dead and 
wounded, many of whom still breathed ; made fantastic pro- 
cessions ; decapitated many ; cut the ears from asses and 
placed them on the tortured faces of the clergy, throwing 
smoking intestines and bleeding hearts at the feet of the 
images. Terrible carnival ! whose horrors were increased by 
the noise and rattle of muskets, the fall of ruins, the crack- 
ling of the flaming houses, the blasphemies and loud laughter 
of the drunken and voluptuous, the maledictions of the con- 
querors, the supplications of the conquered, the terrified 
rushing of the fugitives, the death-rattle of the dying, and the 
silence of the dead left naked on the smoking and ensan- 
guined stones, as if that dreadful night were the last night of 



ioo THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

unhappy Rome — as if those were the fatal hours for the work 
of the exterminating angels of the world ! 

The desolation of that city was unequaled. Shut up in 
prison, the Pope, Clement VII., ate the flesh of horses and 
asses. The dead, avenging their immolation, engendered a 
pestilence. Before Rome had quite recovered from these fear- 
ful calamities, which occupied almost all the second half of the 
century, Michael Angelo entered her gates to conclude his la- 
bors, to enrich with another masterpiece the Sistine Chapel, 
to leave on the central wall the "Universal Judgment." The 
great tragedy just mentioned gave him inspiration; the death 
of his country's liberty, the new ruin of Rome, the triumph of 
reform over a part of the human race, the victory of time over 
his own life, of old age on his powers, of sorrow on his soul. 
While sketching his gigantic work, a thousand times he be- 
lieved himself dying. At last, falling from the scaffold, he 
opened a wound in his leg, and, shutting himself up in his 
house, resolved to leave it no more till carried to the tomb. 
One of his friends, a physician, went to see him, called him by 
name, and, receiving no answer, broke his way into the house 
like a robber, and eventually succeeded in tearing him from 
his melancholy. 

The fate of Italy is one of the wounds which remain in the 
heart, and consequently one ef the inspirations of its con- 
science. The study of Dante, soothing and apocalyptic, ani- 
mates and sustains it. Taking an outline with a very wide 
margin, Michael Angelo filled it in with designs from poetic 
visions, and from exquisite and life-like sculptures. For three 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. IOI 

centuries the great poem of Dante explained and beautified 
the Universal Judgment of Michael Angelo, as the poem of 
Homer gave vitality to the tragedies of iEschylus. The hu- 
man frame and its organism, heretofore little studied by him, 
and almost unknown, is the principal element of his plastic 
conceptions. In the Universe he saw but man alone. His 
anthropology is less soft and harmonious than that of Greece 
— it is gigantic. His men are immense, like his ideas. From 
this arises a certain contempt which he occasionally shows for 
beauty in immortal serenity, and a certain unrestrained liberty 
with regard to the sublime. When young, he changed his liv- 
ing models for corpses. " For twelve years he lived studying 
and almost analyzing the dead. One time he became infect- 
ed with the virus of putrefaction, and was at the point of death 
from an effort to extract the sublime from a skeleton laid 
aside as useless by the world. 

His profound study of the anatomy of the human form is 
visible in this picture, in this poem. All griefs have shaken 
those bodies whose nerves are contracted in violent agitation. 
All the figures are undraped. Michael Angelo dared much 
in the Sistine Chapel when he commenced the reaction against 
Renaissance — when hypocrisy went so far as to take the wind- 
ing-sheet of the Middle Ages wherewith to shroud nature anew. 
It is difficult now to imagine the scandal which this audacity 
on the part of the artist produced in that age, already sepa- 
rated from the semi-Pagan days of Leo X. Aretino, who de- 
lighted in depicting all kinds of unveiled impurity, was much 
offended with the chaste nudity of true art. Biagio, Master 



102 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

of the Ceremonies to Paul III., implored the painter, on the 
part of the Pontiff, to drape his figures and not expose the hu- 
man form so completely. "Tell the Pope," replied Michael 
Angelo, " that with regard to the pictures, they may be cor- 
rected in a few minutes, but his Holiness will find it difficult 
to improve the world." As a punishment to Biagio, he paint- 
ed him with the ears of an ass in the depths of hell. The 
Master of the Ceremonies ran to complain to Paul III. of the 
affront put on his respectable person. "He has put me in 
the picture," he said, weeping like a child, and tremulous as 
an old man; "I beg your Holiness will take me out of that" 
" But where has he placed thee?" demanded the Pontiff. " In 
hell, your Holiness, in hell," replied Biagio, sobbing. "If 
thou hadst been in purgatory," said the Pope, " I would have 
removed thee, but I have no authority whatever in hell." 

It is impossible to detail all that has been said about this 
wonderful fresco. The Academical School, which predom- 
inated during the past century, and so much resembled the 
hybrid and wearisome narrowness of many literary critics, ter- 
rified at all greatness, which overwhelmed its own irremedi- 
able littleness, has treated it as an ill-designed daub. There 
is one writer who describes this great work as a collection of 
frogs. Three hundred undraped figures — some of them half 
clothed at a later period by Volterra, who earned for himself 
by this artistic profanation the name of Braghetone — three 
hundred nude figures grouped together in a mural picture with 
fifty feet of height and forty of breadth. One readily under- 
stands that it cost much time and labor. One is disposed to 



THE SIS TINE CHAPEL, I03 

examine it with the same attention with which one listens to 
an air of Beethoven. Those who are naturally irreverent and 
unimpressed in presence of art will after some time feel and 
admire its beauties, and become absorbed in the profound 
contemplation of that marvelous masterpiece of genius. The 
artist should not attempt to imitate it, because there are cer- 
tain personalities in history, there are certain styles in art and 
literature, whose individuality is so powerful, whose stature is 
so elevated, whose centre of gravity is so removed from the 
sphere of general gravitation, that to follow them would cause 
a vertigo, and the bold mortal attempting to imitate them 
would but expose himself to a perilous fall. Go into St. 
Peter's after having gazed at the figures of Michael Angelo, 
and you will observe in the colossal statuary — violent, exag- 
gerated, and in bad taste — you will see the utter ruin mediocre 
artists have made in trying to copy the unique and almost 
superhuman genius of Michael Angelo, who must remain the 
wonder of ages — like Dante, like Shakespeare, like Calderon 
— alone in his inaccessible solitude. 

Nature is but little represented in the picture ; Michael An- 
gelo has only depicted air and light. The planets are not 
seen revolving majestically through space, nor the sun dyed 
in gold and crimson, nor the mountains rent in pieces, nor 
the raging sea tossed in foaming waves by a terrible tempest ; 
nothing of this — in the blue air, in the air alone, passes the 
awful scene occupied solely by human bodies and celestial 
clouds, and over both the anger of the Eternal. All appears 
horrible, all frightful, in that picture, as if no one could be 
saved, so forcibly does terror dominate all other sentiments. 



104 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

In the first compartment there is the boat of Charon on a 
leaden river, and at the left we see the lurid and sinister light 
of Purgatory. Above are the dead, awakening at the sound 
of the trumpet, raising the marble of their sepulchres, rend- 
ing their grave-clothes, shaking the dust from their almost 
naked skeletons and the sleep from the nearly empty sockets 
of their mortal eyes. Among the dead there arise many who 
have scarcely recovered the power of motion ; they struggle 
violently to help themselves ; agitated by uncertainty, listen- 
ing to the irrevocable sentence, bearing on their shoulders 
the weight — more or less heavy — of their worldly works. 
Among those who move rapidly, there are some who despair, 
others who pray, more who hope, and many who help and 
support each other. To the right of Christ is a bright group 
of women already saved ; who all intone a hymn, and among 
them one is sublime — a mother who has just heard the judg- 
ment on her daughter, whom she folds in her arms with a 
rapturous embrace, assuring herself of the happiness she can 
scarce believe. Near the women is a group of angels, who 
appear by their melancholy to receive in their faces a shower 
of tears, borne to them by the wind. Below the angels are 
the blessed, many of whom recognize each other, after many 
ages, and embrace on the heights of the Eternal City. In 
the centre, Jesus in anger curses, condemns, punishes, without 
heeding the prayers of his mother, separating himself from the 
lost ones, without even looking toward them lest he should 
alleviate with his glance their eternal torments. Adam, in 
majestic old age, is by his side, resuming his humanity, as 



THE SISTINE CHAPEL. 



io5 



Christ returns to the heavens. But where the genius of Mi- 
chael Angelo is shown in all its grandeur is in that immense 
torrent of the condemned, who fall overcome by the terrible 
sentence, some inert as withered leaves, others contracting 
their bodies in agony, as if they could rebel against their eter- 
nal doom, already biting their hands and tearing their hair, 
already awe-stricken by the sight of the flames before them, 
and delirious from terror; all in the most cruel physical and 
moral torture ; Titans, full of life, of flesh and blood, offering 
an abundant food for torment ; Titans, who roar, curse, and 
revile ; who spit horrors from their mouths, and struggle fu- 
riously with the serpents twined around their bodies, and look 
in the air for a cloud to cover them, and fall with a fearful 
shuddering, as if at the first contact of their flesh with the 
molten lead in the eternal fire ! 

Attention can not be for long concentrated on the sublime. 
On feeling a profound emotion, the nerves are shaken and 
the brain is furrowed as if by an electric shock. I felt my 
temples palpitate, as if the swelling veins were about to burst 
from the torrent of gigantic thoughts excited by that Chapel, 
which comprehends all of human life from the Creation to 
the Universal Judgment. I wanted air, and went out to 
breathe it in the Roman Campagna, around whose ruins the 
lovely season of April had flung her green and joyous mantle. 
But on turning, I beheld, in the azure of the heavens, the 
outline of a stupendous work, over which floats the soul of 
Michael Angelo, who designed the dome of St. Peter's, and 
which appeared gilded and glorified by the last rays of the 

E 2 



io 6 THE SIS TINE CHAPEL. 

setting sun; a- temple slowly stretching itself to the infinite, 
as if to say to Jehovah that the eternity promised to Rome 
by the gods of Antiquity was realized in the Ancient Age by 
its tribunes and its heroes, strengthened in the Middle Age 
by its Popes and learned doctors, and saved in the Modern 
Age by the genius which raised that Cupola as the summit of 
history, as the crown of the spirit, as the tiara of the world ! 



Chapter V. 
THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA, 

I never believed there could be in the world a town so 
dead as Toledo. But then I had never seen Pisa. The dif- 
ference between these two beautiful places is, notwithstand- 
ing, very great. In Toledo, adjoining edifices which have 
been wonderfully preserved, such as the Cathedral, there are 
buildings almost in ruins, as the church of San Juan de los 
Reyes and the palace of Charles V. The ruin and the deso- 
lation justify the solitude. 

But in Pisa all the monuments are standing, all are most 
carefully preserved, all are white and renovated by modern 
restoration — some painted in lively colors. Yet still the soli- 
tude is indescribable. You would say that those palaces ex- 
pect their inhabitants, and are prepared to receive them, but 
no inhabitants come to take possession. In the month of 
May, on the day of my arrival, I happened to stand on the 
central bridge of the Lung' Arno at two o'clock in the after- 
noon, and I can assure the reader that, being alone, complete- 
ly alone, I was almost tempted to fancy the large town had 
been destined solely for my particular person. It is pre- 
cisely the place for an egotist. It was most melancholy to 
see those two broad rows of fine buildings, really elegant 



108 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

houses; those numerous bridges, those magnificent road-ways, 
that exquisite cleanliness; the river below, the smiling heavens 
above ; at one extremity the arched trees waving gracefully 
with the breath of the fresh sea-breeze, and no one, absolutely 
nobody but myself, at that hour and in that delicious place, 
to contemplate and enjoy so much beauty. 

I felt inclined to shout aloud, feeling sure that the echo 
would be my only response. A stranger once made a bet 
that he would go round the walls of Pisa on horseback with- 
out meeting a living soul, and he won his wager. The En- 
glish and the Russians whose lungs have become diseased by 
the severity of northern climates, in order to prolong their 
days for a short time, take refuge in Pisa, where they are shel- 
tered by the mountains from the keen winds of the North, and 
secured by the solitude from all great emotions. Thus you 
see from time to time very pretty young girls, with that flush 
on the cheek and that brilliancy in the eyes which are indic- 
ative of consumption, accompanied by some of their family, 
looking sad and gloomy, as if they had already mourned and 
wept the inevitable stroke of separation. These circumstances 
contribute to the general depression of the town, called, with 
good reason — "dead Pisa." 

But, notwithstanding the present dejection, there was- a 
time in which her liberties astonished Italy, and her com- 
merce was a marvel of the world ; a time in which the sea 
brought even to her gates the tributes of Corsica and Sardin- 
ia ; a time in which her ships transported the Crusaders to 
Asia, and brought from Asia gold, purple, and ivory ; a time 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. I09 

in which her warriors aided the German Emperors against 
the Roman Pontiffs, and the chiefs of Barcelona against the 
Moors of Majorca; a time in which pirates dreaded her 
power, and the Saracens trembled on the coast of Africa at 
the gleaming of her lances ; and in which the columns 
brought to Pisa from distant expeditions formed a trophy of 
the first victory of the arts. Then the last masters of mosaic 
from Constantinople filled with brilliant stones the arches of 
her monuments; then the first painters who divined the secret 
of design animated with mystic figures her walls and clois- 
ters ; then the Jews heaped her with riches, protecting them- 
selves under the shadow of her toleration ; then Nicolas and 
John of Pisa, who must be numbered among the men of gen- 
ius of the Middle Ages, chiseled and polished her marble, 
and produced those white figures which appear the early vis- 
ions of a new age of inspirations — awakening the mind to 
the splendor of new ideas almost before they appeared, like 
those birds which announce the coming day in the hours of 
darkness. 

The liberties of Pisa brought forth her commerce ; com- 
merce produced riches ; riches the arts and sciences. The 
machinery of Buschetto in the eleventh century raised enor- 
mous weights, whose gravity would conquer much modern 
mechanism. % The light vessels, with their graceful triangular 
sails, brought in the tenth century pieces of rustling silks, 
which, from their brilliance, their quality, and color, might be 
called radiant apparitions of Ancient India in the midst of 
the darkness of the Middle Ages. Serpents of bronze from 



no THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

Egypt twined around columns of granite, and winged horses 
from Greece and Byzantine cupolas beautified and embel- 
lished the city. Thousands of workmen thronged the quays 
when her laws were based on the principles of liberty. But 
the Republic expired, and Pisa is a corpse ! Perhaps it is on 
this account that her chief monument is a cemetery. In the 
zenith of her glory and splendor Pisa predicted her sad des- 
tiny, and erected the building most suitable for her future 
history — she erected the Campo Santo. 

With my soul saddened by the melancholy of the town, in 
the midst of that oppressive solitude, where the soft murmur 
of the sea-breeze is alone audible, I turned to visit the mag- 
nificent monument which was to cause me so much emotion 
and to give me so much instruction. The place in which the 
Campo Santo is situated is the most deserted part of the 
town. In vain the high mountains of Pisa lift their azure 
peaks in the ether of a splendid horizon ; in vain the luxuri- 
ous vegetation of spring — flowers, butterflies, and birds' nests 
cover with their profusion even the bare stones of the round 
towers in the walls ; in vain the magnificent baptistery (close 
to the Campo Santo, and which appears the high dome of a 
subterranean temple) shows its chiseled buttresses ; in vain 
the white leaning tower, looking like a gigantic column be- 
side her sharp -sounding bells, and the cathedral, adorned 
with costly jewels, sends forth her harmonious litany ; in vain 
all attempts to awaken a new life ; the nettles which spring 
up over this immense desert and all around recall and inspire 
the sad ideas of death and decay. 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. X1I 

The Campo Santo is a vast and severe structure, with high 
walls and narrow entrances ; a marble tomb for the whole 
city. The Pharaohs of Egypt, the Caesars of Rome, the Ori- 
ental Satraps have raised pyramids, fortresses, and mounds 
to serve as burial-places, and to conceal the worms which 
shall gnaw their bodies and their purple ; but none of these 
superb monuments where despots perpetuate eternally in 
death the isolated pride of their lives — none of them can bear 
comparison as to grace and beauty with this cemetery of cit- 
izens, who there mingle and confound their bones, and whose 
cold ashes, purified by the sharp scythe of death, irradiate the 
same warmth, the same enthusiasm, that in life animated 
their free bosoms. 

The exterior is extremely simple. It appears like an im- 
mense mausoleum hewn out of one solid stone. The per- 
spectives of death give extraordinary solemnity to every ob- 
ject in life. Always when man wishes to figure death he also 
expresses immortality. In vain he paints its last agony as 
the sorrow of sorrows; in vain its ultimate asylum as the 
shadow of shadows ; there, in the hollow of the empty grave, 
in the depths of the unfathomable abyss, there always ex- 
tends the mysterious light of a new existence. We all know 
that man, that epitome of creation ; that mineral subject to the 
laws of gravity and to the limits of extension ; that vegetable 
which can not exist without air and light and water; that ani- 
mal who is born and nourished like other mammalia \ that 
microcosm whose spherical head copies the circle of the 
heavens, and whose sparkling eyes reflect the lustre of the 



H2 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

stars ; that angel who exalts himself through time and space, 
and essays to contemplate and understand in their purity the 
archetypes of nature, of which things are but shadows ; the 
great musician of the worlds, the high-priest and the poet 
among all beings ; he who can deduce universal laws from 
particular actions, and extract from the rough matter the im- 
palpable essence of the spirit ; he who observes and admires 
the music of the spheres ; he whose aspiring thoughts seek to 
unfold the secrets of nature — he can not bury himself entirely 
under a few shovelfuls of clay without burying with him at 
the same time all creation ! 

And, notwithstanding, no monument can express nothing- 
ness so well as this parallelogram — irregular, solemn, and 
death-like. We all require an obscure dwelling under our 
feet, which awaits the moment of our death like the desert 
the rain-drops. We all have a sepulchre. The nakedness of 
the exterior of the Campo Santo of Pisa, the monotony, the 
uniformity, are the nakedness, the monotony, the uniformity 
of death. As the gate opens, you fancy it is the gate of eter- 
nity. The cold of those vaults petrifies your bones \ the si- 
lence of those graves deprives you of utterance. I felt com- 
pletely isolated, like a dead man forgotten in his coffin. 

I, wandering without home, without country, asked myself 
if that journey was not the symbol of my last voyage, if that 
passing visit to the cemetery was not the anticipated picture 
of the day in which men should come to fetch my body and 
throw it into a pit, that its putrid miasma should not infect 
the air they breathe. The guardian of the dead, who was 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. II3 

standing near the gate, invited me to enter. The most mel- 
ancholy ideas struggled in my brain, and fell like corrosive 
drops upon my heart. The sound of a pickaxe digging the 
hollow graves, and the jingling of the keys carried by the 
guardian, fell painfully on my ear. But, nevertheless, I en- 
tered, thinking that death is, after all, as natural as life, that 
the tomb is the cradle of Eternity. And the great gate 
closed behind me ! 

If, as I believe, and as I hope, after passing from life to 
death, we go from this to another and to a happier world, I 
greatly doubt if the short journey could offer as much variety 
and interest as the interior of the Campo Santo of Pisa. I 
beheld with ecstasy the lofty arches covered with precious 
woods ; the broad walls adorned with every possible combi- 
nation of color ; the oval windows of immense height, with 
their light columns and their elegant ornamental roses ; the 
cypresses and the ivy; the honeysuckle pushing its fragrant 
blossoms into the central court, its leaves rustling softly in 
the breeze j the rude monuments of monastic times shadowed 
by the cross, joined to the beautiful tombs of classic ages, 
adorned with nymphs and fauns ; the bacchanalian vase of 
Paros marble, with its sculptured figures of the priests and of 
the god of wine, by the side of the Madre Dolorosa with her 
son in her arms, overcome by the contemplation of death and 
her tears of agony ; the trophies of the Crusades close to the 
native offerings of the Romans ; the friezes of the great Gre- 
cian temples mingled with the architraves of the altars of the 
tenth century ; a bust of Brutus, and the Roman Tribunes 



ii 4 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 



under the white wings of the marble angels wrought by 
Christian sculptors ; the recumbent statues upon the pave- 
ment looking as if sunk in the eternal sleep, those which are 
erect on their pedestals stretching forth their arms as if to 
enter conquerors into immortality ; the saints and virgins, the 
patriarchs, the doctors, the seraphim, the cherubim, the choirs 
of the blessed, the demons, gnomes, and monsters floating on 
the many-colored atmosphere of the gigantic frescoes which 
cover all the walls ; an indescribable chaos in those four 
Gothic galleries — a chaos over which the sound of the bell 
comes like the trumpet of the angel, and the noise of the 
pickaxe like the response of the dead opening their tombs at 
the great summons ; a chaos where all ages, all civilizations, 
all arts crowd together in confusion over the fragments of a 
world in ruins — a picture of the Valley of Jehoshaphat at the 
supreme hour of the Universal Judgment ! 

And, notwithstanding, when you have once recovered from 
your first sensation of astonishment, you find nothing more 
regular than that chaos. Four walls, four galleries, four series 
of oriel windows; a court-yard in the centre; at the entrance 
by the principal door a chapel; and in the middle of the little 
gallery to the right a church ; in the cultivated part of the 
court is a wonderfully luxuriant vegetation of leaves and flow- 
ers ; at the extremities there are four tall, dark-green cypress- 
es — melancholy trees, nourished like the plants by food from 
the dead. 

There are few Gothic buildings in Italy — very few. This 
architecture of the Middle Ages has not been able to eradi- 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. IIS 

cate the enduring Paganism with which the country of the arts 
is impregnated. It appears that when the architects proposed 
to erect the Catholic structure, which they intended to finish 
for One and the only God, the goddesses sighed from the bot- 
tom of their streams or the hollow of their trees, to entreat 
them to continue the antique columns crowned with garlands, 
immortal as themselves. The Gothic architecture is the archi- 
tecture of the thought and judgment, not that of the imagina- 
tion; it is rather the native spirit than the plastic genius. 
Consequently it can not be the architecture of Italy. The 
Campo Santo of Pisa is Gothic. But with what motherly de- 
votion she has gathered all the arts to her bosom ! It import- 
ed but little to the Italians that a sepulchre should represent 
the heathen fables opposed by Christianity. Whatever they 
found most beautiful they placed in their cemetery, and they 
filled it with the bones of Christians. The mother of the 
Countess Matilda — of that lady who was Catholic J>ar excellence, 
of that firm- friend of the Popes, of that most orthodox hero- 
ine — rests in her sarcophagus, on which there is a sculpture of 
Phaedra. Diana kissing the forehead of Endymion sleeping is 
one of the marbles of the Campo Santo. Pagan busts are 
placed close to the images of the saints. The lamps lighted 
by religion illumine the face of Brutus. Near the mausoleum, 
where the cavalier of the Middle Ages folds his hands and 
bends his knees in prayer, we find Augustus, and Agrippa, the 
founder of that Pantheon where for the last time the gods of 
antiquity took refuge. A bacchante sleeps the sleep of intoxi- 
cation, with the empty cup by her side, under a fresco which 



n6 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA 

represents the macerations of a cenobite, joined to the tomb 
from which is suspended the crown of white roses consecrated 
to innocence, and over which are expanded the wings — as if 
covering a nest — of the Guardian Angel. The Good Shep- 
herd, buried in the catacombs of the martyrs, and sculptured 
on a sarcophagus which the early Christians watered with their 
tears, leads his sheep to the Church ; a few paces off there 
is a bass-relief, whose tritons formed part of the court of Nep- 
tune in the depths of ocean, before nature had been robbed 
of her divinities. Meleager follows the chase beside the 
altar where Henry VII. worships. On a capital dedicated to 
Mary the Virgin, full of mysticism, and almost at her feet, are 
Etruscan figures in all the reality of life. The sculptor, Delia 
Robia, has there a Madonna in terra cotta, similar to the By- 
zantine Virgins \ and on a marble column from Egypt, close; 
by, is a head of Achilles. Andrew of Pisa has chiseled the 
Prophets and Evangelists with all the rigidity of Catholicism 
in the midst of bacchantes, represented on other bass-reliefs 
with the Grecian voluptuousness. Here is an Emperor of Ger- 
many, seated in his sacred chair ; there an Arabian winged 
horse; yonder, Venus with all the graces of love in the do- 
minions of the dead. How these men knew by artistic and 
supernatural intuition that all generations and all ages are 
reconciled in the abode of death! These sculptors knew that 
combatants who fall in the light of the sun, hating and cursing 
each other under opposing standards on the battle-field, are 
united there in the region of shadows. These men under- 
stood that human wretchedness may drive them from life, but 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 1I j 

nothing can deprive them of death. Although you destroy 
and seek to annihilate your enemy, though you burn his body 
and give his ashes to the wind, his atoms are there, in the 
laboratory of universal life, in the immense bosom of nature ; 
and after a time your children will absorb them and bear them 
in their hearts. The hatred of men is so great that it desires 
not the peace of the dead. And yet, while contemplating the 
Campo Santo of Pisa, I thought, before the dead of all genera- 
tions and those monuments of all epochs, that as we have in 
our bodies the particles of all pre-existing life, and in our con- 
sciences the ideas of all generations, so we have in our lives 
a part of all ages, and that nothing is more stupid and inhu- 
man than to separate ourselves from other human creatures 
by our creeds, when children of all times, individuals of all 
humanity, by those altars which seem to us most full of super- 
stition, those dedicated to household gods, by the Egyptian 
Pyramids, by the Sphinxes of Babylon, there has passed the 
spirit of humanity — has passed before arriving at its present 
plenitude, as great rivers pass by beds of ice, of stone, and 
mud, before pouring themselves into the immensity of ocean. 
This is the true Campo Santo of a people, the true Panthe- 
on of the Middle Ages. In those days people were more pre- 
occupied about death than life. The cemetery was the Eter- 
nal City ; hell and purgatory the epopee ; the jubilee the 
great association of races, and the crusade the great war. 
The Middle Ages gravitated around a sepulchre. The strong- 
est and richest among the people shaped his boat, wove his 
sail, and went by the Eastern Sea to Constantinople and to 



n8 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

Syria, to go from thence to Jerusalem ; and after a thousand 
difficulties, after perilous encounters, burdened by the weight 
of the enormous armor of that period, and the cross on their 
bosoms, to seek amid the thickest of the desert, under the 
brilliant heavens, on burning hills, in the violence of the wind 
that seemed like a voracious fire, the sepulchre of Christ ; to 
die beside his sacred body, and to be covered with that earth 
sanctified by the tears of his followers and by the blood of 
Calvary. The citizens who remained on the shores of Italy 
desired also to participate in this benefit, to sleep in the bo- 
som of the promised land, and to mingle their ashes with 
those of the prophets. And the republican equality would 
not admit of privileges in death. The great commerce of the 
city accomplished the wishes of the inhabitants. The squad- 
rons arrived even at the gate, loaded with holy earth from Je- 
rusalem. In this earth was buried the bones of the people. 
It was of a devouring quality. In twenty-four hours it con- 
sumed the remains confided to it, as if it was an earth of fire. 
The greater part of the salts which performed this prodigy 
have evaporated after so many ages ; but still, according to 
the learned Valery, it consumes a dead body in forty-eight 
hours. 

I looked on it with enthusiasm. A coverlid of green velvet, 
on which a rain of roses seemed to have fallen, ornamented 
it ; the wild rose extended its thorny branches around, and 
clouds of white and pure butterflies — like the souls of children, 
in my imagination — enjoying that aroma and drinking the 
sweet juice of those plants which extended themselves in fes- 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. n 9 

toons and garlands of life over the habitation of the dead. 
Earth, most holy earth of Jerusalem, trampled by my feet, 
thou hast germinated the idea of God, and has long guarded 
it in thy bosom, in order that the Modern Age may repose in 
thy depths ; thou hast collected the bones of those prophets 
who kindled the faith in the human conscience ; from thy clay 
has been moulded the immortal cradle of our civilization, and 
that divine Martyr who sacrificed himself in thy mountains to 
save the world from slavery and the infamous yoke of destiny 
has made thee as fruitful and as sacred as the seeds of mar- 
tyrdom ! Land of Jerusalem ! philosopher or Christian, Jew 
or Catholic, man of the past or man of the future, whoever 
presses thee must be stirred with profound emotion, because 
thou art part of ourselves, and enterest, immortal earth, into 
the composition of our life ! 

But let us leave the court, and look again upon the gallery, 
contemplating, not the tombs, but the paintings. The Ital- 
ians are essentially artists, and .can not understand that an 
art can exist alone and isolated. They employ both sculpture 
and painting for their monuments ; they inscribe them with 
verses and inscriptions, that they may contain sentiments, and 
afterward with music that they may have voices. Let us 
not forget that the Campo Santo of Pisa was erected in the 
thirteenth century. To understand it well, it is necessary to 
comprehend the age of its birth, because architecture never 
loses — least of all in religious monuments — its symbolical 
character. 

The thirteenth century began with being the age of Cathol- 



120 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

icism, and ended with being the age of heresy. The human 
spirit was exalted with faith in the commencement of the cent- 
ury, and inflamed with passion at its conclusion. It began 
with Innocent III., who saw the human conscience submis- 
sive beneath his feet, Europe on her knees before his altars ; 
and ended with Boniface VIII., who felt the blow of the laity 
on his cheek, and died with rage at his own impotence. It 
opened with Ferdinand III., of Castile, who merited to be 
reckoned among the number of the saints, and closed with 
Alphonso X., who deserved to be counted among the number 
of philosophers. Pedro II., of Arragon, was born under the 
protection of the Church, grew up in her bosom, lived to give 
battle to the infidels, and died fighting for heretics. And 
these rapid changes are the general law of the century. 
James I., of Arragon, in the first half of the century, bought 
and obtained by entreaty lands for the Church, and Pedro 
II. forced tribute from the Pope. The saints who directed 
the Crusades and its armies worked miracles before the walls 
of Verona against the Pontifical troops. The "war for the 
sepulchre of Christ was suspended. Moorish science domi- 
nated over theological knowledge. Doubt became mixed with 
reason, irony entered into literature, the sentiment of nature 
into art. Human intelligence had passed from the period of 
faith to the period of reason. 

Do you now comprehend why the cemetery of Pisa has 
been so tolerant ? In looking at its galleries and paintings, 
you behold two hemispheres of time. The arches are ani- 
mated with one idea, the walls by another. There is the 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. I2I 

Gothic, and here the distant announcement of the Renais- 
sance. One could not write the history of the arts without 
saluting as one of their birthplaces this Campo Santo. You 
can not enter into it without evoking the ages in which it was 
constructed. And you can not call up these ages without 
bringing to memory the name of Nicolas of Pisa. Born in 
the lap of mysticism, he died in the bosom of a new age. Be- 
tween his cradle and his tomb there are two worlds. The 
human spirit changed its character while this man lived, who 
reckoned seventy-one years. But he felt the change ; he an- 
nounced the death of mysticism. His fathers, his masters, 
made him kneel, fold his hands before Byzantine statues, bow 
beneath the terrors of the representation of the Universal 
Judgment ; and later he went and prostrated himself before 
Grecian figures radiant with beauty, elated with that essen- 
tially human civilization suckled at the fruitful breast of lib- 
erty. Nicolas was born in the seventh year of the thirteenth 
century, and died in the seventy-eighth. If I had to express 
this age in one single symbol, I would select one of his fig- 
ures, and demonstrate from it that the mystic thought is still 
visible in his brow, but that the Greek form is seen in its 
body, as a young plant shooting in the earth, bathed in new- 
fallen dew. 

John of Pisa, the architect of the Campo Santo, also a 
sculptor, looked with the same eyes as Nicolas of Pisa. Com- 
pare the works of these two men of genius with the gigan- 
tic mosaics and the extraordinary pictures that are but a few 
paces removed in the centre of the Cathedral — works brought 

F 



122 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

from Constantinople, or wrought by Byzantine artists. The 
virgins, the saints, the Byzantine angels have an expression 
of sublime terror, but also of coldness, the rigidity of death ; 
the virgins, the saints, the statues of Nicolas and of John of 
Pisa already aspire to the serenity and the perfection of the 
Greek. It is the world of nature that opens to the breath of 
the new spirit. It is human beauty, which leaves the shroud 
of monastic loveliness in the obscurity of the cloister. These 
stones are trophies of the battles of the spirit; or, to define 
it better, they are trophies of its victories. 

While Nicolas and John were modeling the stones to build 
cemeteries or to form statues, a little shepherd, keeper of a 
small flock, sketched on the clay, in the dust, or the sand 
strange figures. This Tuscan shepherd was the father of 
painting: he was Giotto. His fame filled the fourteenth cent- 
ury. This extraordinary man was, with respect to painting, 
what Nicolas of Pisa was with regard to sculpture. In his 
genius there was already the marks of the genius of Raphael. 
There are the arms of his saints still rigid, the outlines of the 
body sharp and angular, the feet deformed, as if they could 
not stand quite steadily ; but the heads are full of benevo- 
lence, the faces full of grace, of that grace which ever comes 
to Byzantine artists in their extremity — that grace, daughter 
of the serenity of the spirit and twin-sister of hope. We see 
there that if the bodies sketched by Giotto belong to the 
earth of his time, the heads approach the heaven of the new 
age. Those faces were caressed by the breeze of the morn- 
ing, bathed by the light of Aurora. The artist was submerged 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. I23 

in the bosom of nature, meeting in her the immortal inspira- 
tion. His pencil is a new efflorescence of the human spirit. 
Look at his Job on the wall at the left ! It is blotted, like the 
recollection of those days ; it is undone, like the faith which 
animated him ; he is seen through a cloud, distant, far dis- 
tant; the wall is injured by the damp and the sea-breeze, 
which strips it in pieces from the wall ; disfigured, stained by 
late restorations, you see Job in the same manner that you 
behold fantastic figures in the clouds, variegated by the sun 
of the west ; nevertheless you see him as a penitent who com- 
plains of God without daring to curse Him, surrounded by in- 
fidel friends, between the. devil, hideous and terrific, and the 
sweet and beautiful angel on the right, floating in a lumi- 
nous horizon. I know not why, but that damaged fresco ap- 
peared to me as a symbol which Giotto had traced without 
wishing or thinking of doing it, or perhaps it was done by 
some contemporary of his own accord in the critical and ex- 
traordinary epoch of that century, between the demon of Feu- 
dalism, then struggling to exist, and the angel of the Renais- 
sance, which was then issuing from its larvae. 

I can scarcely explain why this cemetery appears to me 
to be altogether a cemetery of the Middle Ages. A disciple 
of Fra Angelico, of that mystic in whose retina was painted 
angels and cherubim, from whose hands no Christ and no 
Virgin ever came without prayers and tears — a disciple of 
that sublime monk who painted on his knees, and who has 
left a gracious, remembrance in the immense fresco he pro- 
duced on almost all the western gallery of the Campo Santo 



124 . THE CAMP0 SANTO OF PISA. 

— has painted a figure which could only have been designed 
in times of greater sensuality than the present, and which is 
illustrative of extreme curiosity. Noah is uncovered and 
drunk upon the ground. A young woman covers her face 
with her hands, but watches him through her half-open fin- 
gers. Fra Angelico would have cursed his pupil Gozzoli. 

But this is the new age, the period of the Renaissance of 
nature, till then despised ; the age of the awakening of the 
sentiments until then blinded; the age in which the faun 
tramples the fields again, arid crowns his horns anew with 
garlands of ivy; the age in which the nymphs give themselves 
up on couches of roses to all the joys of life ; the age in which 
the rivulets intone a hymn of new eclogues ; and between the 
delirious rapture of existence and the awakening of all the 
antique divinities a new Prometheus comes forth, without 
chains, who with his hand dashes the sea aside and discovers 
a new world ; with his foot propels the earth, obliging it to 
revolve in infinite space ; collects the stars with his telescope, 
as the hunter takes the birds in his net, and, weighing them 
in his hand, forces them to murmur in his ears the secrets 
of the skies. 

Yes, that cemetery is the testament of the Middle Ages. I 
fancy I see in those walls the departure and the last adieus 
of those times which preceded our age, as chaos precedes the 
light. The Middle Age, in the mortal agony of its literature, 
reproduced the dance of death. This curious poem could not 
be wanting in the Campo Santo of Pisa, and i# the immortal 
heaven of its paintings of the fourteenth and fifteenth cent- 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. I2 $ 

uries. Orcagna, the great Orcagna, painted it there. Look 
at it, and remember all the other monuments you have ever 
chanced to see, and there you will perceive the entire geneal- 
ogy of art. The mausoleum in which the Princess Beatrice 
reposes is, so to speak, the cradle of the new thought. There 
Nicolas of Pisa studied. In the works of Nicolas of Pisa, his 
son, John of Pisa, the architect and sculptor of the cemetery, 
studied; in the works of John, Andrew of Pisa studied; and 
in the works of Andrew, Orcagna. After Orcagna came Gui- 
berti, who sculptured the gates of the baptistery of Florence, 
the triumphant gates of the Renaissance, named by Michael 
Angelo the gates of Paradise. And before these gates the 
great artist waited to study design. And this grand and glori- 
ous creation of art has this noble genealogy : the mosaics of 
Venice, the mosaics of Pisa, Cimabue, Nicolas of Pisa, Giotto, 
John of Pisa, Orcagna, Guiberti, Masaccio, Leonardo di Vinci, 
Michael Angelo, Raphael. Immortal spirit of man ! Never 
wast thou so great as after having newly encountered the hu- 
man form, the plastic beauty, at the cost of extraordinary ef- 
forts, after eight centuries of maceration, of fasting, and of pen- 
ance. The fresco of Orcagna is the fresco of the dead. The 
design is nevertheless incorrect, the bodies of the figure still 
disproportioned, the perspective is still absent, but the faces 
have a sublime expression, and a soul which irradiates the 
thought, which is kindled by the eyes and illumines the fore- 
head. At the left, a cavalcade of ladies and cavaliers in gala 
costumes stop before the bodies : three swine-herds — one re- 
cently dead and swollen, the second decomposed and eaten by 



l 2 6 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

worms, the third a fleshless skeleton. A cold shudder comes 
over one at seeing those three spoils of death in the midst of 
the crowd of cavaliers richly attired in velvet and ermine; the 
ladies with their luxurious adornments ; the dogs and the fal- 
cons for the chase, all the signs of a life devoted to the com- 
bat or to pleasure. In the centre, the aged, the infirm, the 
dying call upon death in verses which the painter has copied 
to add to the effect of his performance. " O death, medicine 
for all trouble !" But death will not hear them ; he withdraws 
from those who desire him to strike at those who want him 
not and forget him ; to enter with his cutting scythe into some 
pleasant grove, in whose shade repose two lovers, contempla- 
ting each other with delight, and listening to the song of the 
troubadour, who sings the happiness of sentiment, surrounded 
by love and flowers. Yonder, on a high mountain, the peni- 
tents pray for all ; but below there is a great confusion — kings, 
nobles, pages, bishops expire; and these souls are collected 
by the angels, and by demons with wings of bats and with hor-^ 
rible faces. Here the monastic ages finish. The souls mostly 
gathered by the demons are the souls of monks. And joined 
to this fresco, as if looking at it, we find the Final Judgment 
and Hell. 

Long after having visited the Sistine Chapel, one is moved 
by the anger of Jesus, the tender pity of Mary the intercessor, 
the despair -of the reprobates, the ecstasy of the blessed. Sol- 
omon, coming out of his grave and shaking off the earthly 
dust from his eyelids, looks uncertain as to his lot, whether 
he is destined for celestial heights or the infernal abyss; the 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 



127 



avenging genius who draws by his hair into eternal darkness 
a monk who had sought to conceal himself among the bless- 
ed, and the angel of mercy who leads toward the abode of the 
saved a young worldling, already lost among the condemned; 
the woman who wrings her hands with desperation at the en- 
trance of the unfathomable eternity; the old man who casts 
himself at the feet of Jesus to relate his good works and to 
ask the divine clemency; the guardian angel in the centre 
of the picture, melancholy, overcome by infinite sorrow, look- 
ing with his large and profound eyes full of contending emo- 
tions as the souls drop like a cataract of gall into the abyss, 
in the seas of molten lead — the souls he had vainly protected 
against the wickedness of the world beneath his sheltering 
wings, and which he vainly wished to save from the justice of 
the divine anger with his prayers in the supreme hour of judg- 
ment; terrible images of horror and desolation, which appear 
in grim reality on those tombs in that asylum of the depart- 
ed, represented by some cold, rigid, and fleshless figures in 
the last day of the universe. 

In the paintings of all these great pictures, you discover, 
however, that mystic times have passed, and that the period 
of the Renaissance has not yet arrived. In none of them — in 
not one of the immense number of personages depicted on 
these walls do you find either the idealism of Fra Angelico 
or the naturalism of Buonarotti. Human history is a strug- 
gle between thought and reality. In these pictures we find 
that the idea evaporates, but that nature has not yet arrived. 
The mystic spirit is quenched, but as yet there has not been 



i 2 8 THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

substituted that adoration of the human organism which made 
such great painters and such great sculptors — the artists of 
the Renaissance. Michael Angelo threw himself on a dead 
body with the appetite of the hyena; he examined and studied 
so closely that he had each one of its bones engraven in his 
memory. His favorite study was that of the nude, as if he 
wished to bring man back to the primeval innocence of Eden. 
But anatomy was prohibited in the Middle Age. Those un- 
happy artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were 
not able to study the structure of the human body. Their 
forms were confined within their clothing, as if in a bag or in 
a winding-sheet. Man still holds too much before his eyes 
his ever-present transgression, and is ashamed of his own 
body, of the eternal shadow of sin. But though he finds him- 
self thus degraded, he discovers that it enables him to em- 
brace a new idea. The figures of the Campo Santo of Pisa 
are figures of the clouds, uncertain and unknown beings, 
which arise in the limits of two epochs. After all, if we look 
at the human history, we find it thus with all men — all are 
condemned to stifle half the ideas they have learned, and half 
the dear aspirations of existence ; all are dragged onward by 
the interminable current of circumstances, without knowing 
whither ; all are forced to the labor of renovation, without 
knowing wherefore ; more or less all cast off the habiliments 
of the soul — the innocence of childhood, the passion of youth, 
the faith of the cradle — in the cross-ways of the journey; all at 
one time or other fall, subdued by fatigue and exhaustion, on 
a heap of dry illusions, which successors scatter with their 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 12 g 

feet, or cast into a pit, and all continue repeating ceaselessly 
the same herculean labors, and representing the same tragedy 
without completing it. 

Do you believe that death is the end of our being ? I have 
never thought so. If it be, then the universe has been created 
solely for destruction ; and God is a child who has formed the 
worlds like a castle of cards, for the pleasure of overturning 
them. The vegetable consumes the earth, the ox and the 
sheep graze upon the vegetable, we eat the ox and the sheep, 
invisible agents which we call death or nothingness consume 
us ; in the scale of existence some creatures serve only to de- 
stroy other creatures, and the universe is like an enormous 
polypus with a capacious stomach, or, if you desire a more 
classic image, a catafalque upon which burns a funeral torch, 
and is erected like the eternal statue — fatality. Some are pa- 
tient because they have been born lymphatic ; many are he- 
roes because they have much blood ; others are thinkers be- 
cause they are bilious ; more are poets because their nerves 
are excitable ; but all die of their own characteristics, and all 
live while their stomachs endure, while their hearts, their 
brains, their spines are sound. ( What we call virtues or vices 
are tendencies of organism'; what we name faith is but a few 
drops of blood less in the veins, or some irritation in the liver, 
or some atoms of phosphorus in the bones; and what we 
term immortality is but an illusion \ death alone is real and 
certain, and human history is a procession of shadows pass- 
ing like bats between day and night, all to drop one behind 
the other into that obscure, empty, and unfathomable abyss 

F 2 



l 3 o THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. 

which is called Nothing — the unique atmosphere of the uni- 
verse. 

Oh 1 no, no, I can not believe it ! human wickedness can 
never so much affect me as to obscure divine truths in my 
soul. As I can distinguish good from evil, so I can separate 
death from immortality. I believe in the Almighty, and in 
a vision, the Almighty in another and a better world. I 
leave below my body, as armor which fatigues me by its 
weight, to continue my infinite ascension to the heaven of 
heavens, bathed in light eternal. It is true that death exists, 
but true also that there is a soul ; against reality, which 
would shroud me with its leaden mantle, I have the glow and 
fire of thought \ and against fatalism, that would confine me 
by its chains, I have the force and power of liberty. History 
is a resurrection. Barbarians buried the ancient Grecian 
statues, but they live again in this cemetery, producing im- 
mortal generations of artists with kisses from their cold lips 
of marble. Italy was as dead as Juliet; each generation 
flung a handful of earth upon her corpse, and placed a flower 
in her mortuary crown ; yet Italy is alive again ! To-day ty- 
rants sing the Dies Irce on those fields where the members 
of unhappy Poland were divided. Yet soon humanity ap- 
proaches, collects the bones picked clean by the vultures of 
the Neva, and Poland is reborn, standing like a statue of 
faith, with the cross in her arms, on her ancient altars ! I 
have always been impressed with the thought of immortality 
in cemeteries. But I felt it more than commonly in the 
Campo Santo of Pisa, filled with so much life, peopled by so 



THE CAMPO SANTO OF PISA. I3I 

many beings that give inspiration, and consequently immor- 
tality, as the trunks of trees distill honey when bees have in- 
habited them. 

Insensibly the night fell over me. The grave-digger fin- 
ished his work, the noise of his shovel ceased, and the guar- 
dian came to beg I would retire. But I prayed him to leave 
me there another hour, in the bosom of night and of the 
shadows. I wished to submerge myself in the melancholy of 
nothingness, to anticipate my being in that place of silence 
and eternal repose by a long contemplation of the earth of 
the departed where so many generations sleep forgotten. 
There I remained leaning against a tomb, resting my fore- 
head upon the marble, my eyes fixed on the picture of death 
and on the monsters of the Universal Judgment, illuminated 
by the last splendors of the expiring day, awaiting the greater 
sadness which the darkness of night would bring upon me. 
But no ; the fresh breeze of the sea came to awaken me from 
my melancholy dreams ; the sweet flowers of May raised 
their blossoms, before drooping from the heat ; a penetrating 
and intoxicating aroma, full of life and fragrance, diffused 
itself in the air ; the winged glow-worms began to hover be- 
tween the shades of the cloister and the lines of tombs, like 
wandering stars ; while the full moon rose above the horizon, 
floating majestically in ether, with her pale, pure rays lighting 
up the faces of the funereal statues ; and a nightingale, hid- 
den in the thick branches of the highest cypress, chanted his 
song of love, as a serenade to the dead and a supplication to 
the heavens. 



Chapter VI. 

VENICE. 

The night advanced upon us as we crossed the campagna 
of Padua, directing our way toward Venice. The sky was 
cloudy, and at intervals between the showers there were mo- 
ments of great clearness and beauty, in which the first stars 
of evening floated in the limpid atmosphere. But on the bor- 
der of the horizon, toward the northern extremity, on the side 
of the mountains, the clouds emitted flashes of lightning; 
while on the other extreme, toward the south, from the side 
of the sea, fringes of purple, formed by the vapors of the lake, 
mingling with the last glimmer of daylight, gave a copper- 
colored tint to the scene and a fantastic appearance to nat- 
ure; it was impossible to doubt that the region which we 
were about to visit would satisfy all our desires and reward 
our longing, as these natural beauties were revealed between 
the sublime mysteries of the fading light. Notwithstanding 
the beauty around, my impatience was excessive. I observed 
that vegetation became extinct, that we passed dried-up ca- 
nals full of mud, on whose borders some marine plants grew 
sadly. But, though I continually put my head from the win- 
dow, hoping to see the final point of our journey, I saw nei- 
ther the celebrated lagune nor the beloved city ; it seemed 



VENICE, I33 

as if it fled from my impatience and escaped from my desire. 
I had such an idea of the fragility of this beautiful Venice, 
continually combating the winds and the waters, that I feared 
she would disappear before I was permitted to behold her, 
and bury herself in the sea-shell in which she was born, as a 
living miracle of human history. 

I shall always remember the day in which for the first time 
I saw the Alhambra. I ran to seek it without a guide and 
without any companion, desiring a solitary interview, like all 
the assignations of love, with the Maga of the East lost in our 
mountains. I went through a door which I do not remember, 
for I scarcely noticed it. I saw at the left a magnificent 
fountain of the Renaissance, which in no way responded to 
my desires or conceptions. I lost myself in the superb ala- 
medas — promenades planted with rows of trees at either side, 
freshened by the pure breeze of the morning, and illuminated 
by the splendid sun of Granada, whose rays, pouring through 
the thick foliage, formed upon the ground flickering ara- 
besques of light and shadow. I stood before that magnifi- 
cent judiciary gate, upon the slope of a hill, in the architect- 
ure of which the Arabesque, without losing its graceful ele- 
gance, has taken all. the solemnity of the Gothic. I entered, 
expecting to find the palace beyond the gate. It was not 
there ; I only beheld a hall, used as an armory, and an altar 
of the Middle Ages, before which a lamp was burning. 
Round about there was a long row of small round towers ; in 
the centre of the grand square a most beautiful palace of the 
sixteenth century, but in direct opposition to my precon- 



i 3 4 VENICE. 



ceived impressions ; and in the distance, upon an elevation 
covered with laurels, its light galleries resembling minarets, 
stood the Oriental Generalife. I looked for the Alhambra, 
the palace, the magical grotto of stalactites, beautiful with 
brilliant Asiatic colors, where were extinguished, at the close 
of the fifteenth century, those who came like lions to con- 
quest at the beginning of the eighth century. But not one of 
the numerous doors at which I knocked was the entrance to 
the Alhambra. I feared that a genius, a witch among those 
left in the groves by the magic .of the Middle Ages — certainly 
unlike the lovely goddesses with which classic antiquity peo- 
pled them — had stolen the Alhambra that night, the grand 
building continually threatened with decay, in order to mock 
at my impatience. We are born and we live so unhappily 
that the accomplishment of a desire appears to us a false- 
hood, the realization of hope a deception, as if our sad expe- 
rience had taught us the bitter lesson that in the world noth- 
ing is true but sorrow. 

So, in that moment I doubted the proximity of Venice, or 
feared that for me Venice had disappeared. At last we ar- 
rived at the entrance of the great Venetian lagune. The air 
brought to our ears the sweet voices of the bells announcing 
the Angelus, and reminded us of the sublime emotion of By- 
ron, when one evening he fancied he heard the combination 
of these same echoes from the borders of the horizon gliding 
over the waters, as the stars of heaven to the Mother of 
Christ, with the moon at her feet, and with the mysterious 
white dove waving its wings on her forehead, in that sublime 



VENICE. 



135 



hour of love and adoration. It was true that I went to see 
Venice. .How many times in the long hours of the winter 
evenings, my mother, who was remarkable for her love of let- 
ters, related to me mysterious Venetian stories of events 
much discussed at the beginning of the century : the decapi- 
tation of Marino Faliero, the banishment of the young Fos- 
cari, the matchless heroism of Dandolo, the ungovernable 
passion of Othello, the splendor of the banquets immortal- 
ized by Paul Veronese, the espousals of the Doges with the 
waters of the Adriatic in the gondola covered with brocade 
and moved by golden oars; the infinite sorrow of the last of 
Venetian Magistrates when he fell lifeless at signing the ju- 
dicial record which delivered up his country to Austria for a 
criminal error of Napoleon ; all these simple narrations, half 
historical, half legendary, in which there was always an out- 
line of a traitor or a dungeon to excite the interest of tragic 
terror ; some sittings of the Council of Ten to sustain the 
dramatic power, and some moral teaching to fortify in my 
mind the two great ideas, whose worship I shall never re- 
nounce — liberty and my country. 

Recovering from one of those natural transitions to other 
recollections, I saw in my mind historic Venice — those noble 
children of ancient civilization, pftests of her last household 
gods — funeral cortege of her last days — who conquered fatal- 
ity, saving themselves in the uninhabitable lagunes from the 
irruptions of Attila and his ferocious Huns, to preserve in a 
mysterious and unique city, anchored like a beautiful ship in 
a Grecian port, her classic liberties ; which induced them to 



136 VENICE. 

struggle with the waves when society was uselessly hiding it- 
self in cloisters ; to extend their labor and commerce as a 
safeguard, when in the terrors and uncertainties of the tenth 
century the strongest arms fell with dismay, regarding the end 
of the world as a necessity, and the Universal Judgment as a 
punishment ; and, in fine, to unite and treasure up riches in 
her moles, in her canals, in her palaces chiseled by marvelous 
sculpture ; in her public monuments, singularly beautiful and 
majestic, decorated by a continual festival of shades and col- 
ors ; in her bronze and marbk trophies, the remains of three 
civilizations lost in an infinite series of shipwrecks ; Venice 
being thus Asiatic and Greek, Roman and Byzantine, never 
German — the synthesis of three great ages in history, the pre- 
cious stone in the nuptial ring of the Eastern union, of the 
world of mysteries, with Europe, the world of the new life, of 
the new civilization. 

And as it is impossible to renounce the nation as the race 
to which we belong, I, a Spaniard, felt at that moment crowd- 
ing upon my memory the historic recollections of the service 
rendered to civilization by Venice and Spain, united in the 
memorable maritime crusade. One day the Crescent shone 
over Constantinople. The Byzantines and Greeks fell one 
after the other under the Turkish cimeters, turned ominously 
toward Venice. The isles were taken captive, their sons were 
made rowers in Turkish galleys ; the Mediterranean, the sea 
of civilization, became a lake of Oriental palaces. But the 
vessels of the Spanish cities — of Barcelona, of Valencia, of Ca- 
diz — joined themselves to the ships of Genoa and of Venice, 



VENICE. I37 



and moved onward to oppose the Turk ; which resulted in 
that remarkable victory of Lepanto, in which the waves were 
crimson with human blood and boiled under the fire of the 
cannons ; in which fatalism was driven backward in its de- 
vouring career before the power of Western civilization. 

But, above all, I went to see the town for which we felt so 
much sorrow and sadness during her long captivity in this 
century. How many times I had beheld her in dreams, sur- 
rounded by her islets, like Niobe among her wounded chil- 
dren, cursing men who would not succor her, and despairing 
of the justice of God who tolerated her oppression ! How oft- 
en had I fancied I heard in the mysterious echoes with which 
her shores repeat the murmurs of the Mediterranean a long 
lament for Venice ! How often had I believed I should see 
her one day in her despair fling herself, like Ophelia, into 
her lagunes, and disappear under the waters with her double 
crown of marble and of sea-weed upon her brow, and her 
melancholy death-song upon her lips ! Venice was for us a 
City-Christ, suspended with infamous punishment by the four 
great nails of the Quadrilateral. Venice bereft of some of 
her pearly crowns, her robes of velvet, her gilded barges; 
those lions of bronze with their eyes of diamonds, those croc- 
odiles of emeralds and rubies, those costly jewels with which 
the privileged genius of her painters adorned her, and only 
showed her ruined fragments of marble, stained by the rain 
of her tears, as a mendicant shows his bones covered with 
rude skin through his tatters ! The history of this martyrdom, 
the lament of her past servitude, the numberless elegies wept 



138 VENICE. 



by so many poets, by so many illustrious orators in the dun- 
geons of Venice — all these recollections struggling in my 
mind augmented the emotion produced in my soul at the 
sight of those mysterious shores made illustrious by genius 
and heroism. 

While still excited by these thoughts, the train entered the 
lagune of San Marco. The heavens, as I have said, were on 
one side clear and bright, on the other dark and cloudy, with 
occasional flashes of lightning, at intervals obscured by clouds 
or brilliant with stars, altogether of so singular an aspect 
that I did not weary of looking at it, demanding its light to 
drink in that spectacle, the object of so many desires, the sub- 
ject of so many dreams. The immense lagune, which still 
preserved in its tranquil surface something of the brightness 
of the day, shone in all the expanse of the vast horizon like 
an extended looking-glass crossed by bands, sometimes of 
opal where it reflected the stars, sometimes of amethyst where 
it mirrored the clouds, kindled into a blaze every now and 
then by vivid flashes of lightning. The smoke of the- locomo- 
tive, the breeze from the lagunes, the clouds over our heads, 
the waters beneath our feet, and the broad range of vision, 
made us imagine we were far from the earth, or cruising in 
some distant, extraordinary, and unknown region. Between 
the uncertain sights, the fitful shadows, outlined fantastically 
as if in a half-darkened mirror, we discovered the buildings 
of Venice, here and there illumined by pale lights. If I had 
not known I was in Venice I should immediately have rec- 
ognized her, seeing her rise as if by enchantment from the 



VENICE. I39 



waves, balance herself between the surface of the water and 
the liquid air, without visibly touching the earth in any part 
— a floating city, a nomade maritime caravan, presided over 
by some god of the waves taking a temporary refuge in the 
tranquil bosom of the blue Adriatic. What beauty of colors, 
notwithstanding the night ! The stars seem to tremble in the 
undulating light ; the marine vegetation gives some sombre 
touches to the scene; a light-house contrives by its reflec- 
tions to make serpents of topaz ; the oar of a boat throws up 
a shower of brilliant flashes of phosphorescent light ; already 
white stars (like those of the Milky Way) show themselves in 
the heavens ; on one side are the shadows of the houses, 
darkening the twilight, extending festoons of jet across the 
water ; while on the other side a cloud lost by chance, and 
which, like an aerial sponge, absorbs the last rays of the ab- 
sent sun, letting them fall on certain points in a rain of purple 
— all varied by the gases and the strange reflections which 
the vapors of the air and the changes of the lake give to this 
almost ideal world of most enchanting beauty. 

At last the train stopped. The formalities of giving up the 
tickets and collecting the baggage excited in an incredible 
manner our natural impatience. One would wish to be a bird 
or a fish, to arrive in Venice through the air or the water 
without being annoyed with trunks and umbrellas, which our 
human weakness makes necessary. At last, however, you tread 
those shores eternally kissed by the waters. A long row of 
black gondolas, light and elegant, await you. Mechanically 
you enter the first, without troubling yourself either as to your 



i 4 o VENICE. 

destination or the price of the voyage, as if all the conditions 
of economic life were upset there, where all the conditions 
of vulgar life in ancient and modern towns are also reversed. 
Giving, in answer to the gondolier, the address of your hotel, 
you feel by an almost imperceptible movement that you glide 
along the waters. The soul is weighed down by a profound 
sentiment of sadness. The gondola, ill-lighted by a little lamp 
placed at the end, and conducted by two men, one standing 
at either extremity, appears sometimes a coffin, sometimes a 
whale, sometimes a black swan, sometimes a glow-worm, or 
the transformed corpse of one of the ancient citizens of the 
Adriatic, which draws you onward to the dark caverns of the 
profound bosom of the ocean. As you are dazzled by the 
brightness of the resplendent lagune, you seem to enter into 
the region of darkness. The waters have a wonderfully som- 
bre color, looking as if thick and really bituminous. The 
great walls of the high buildings deepen the night. The lan- 
terns, placed at long distances, only serve as a slight contrast 
against the general obscurity. Venice has her streets of land 
and her streets of water. The streets of water are not light- 
ed. Only the white phosphorescence of the track, or the 
feeble brightness of a window, or the faint ray of the dull 
little lamp from a silent gondola which passes beside you, or 
the reverberation from some distant corner, illumine and ani- 
mate that curious and tortuous labyrinth of stones and iron 
gratings, of bridges and of posts for attaching the gondolas — 
a sort of stunted aquatic trees, but without branches, with- 
out leaves, sad and withered. The city appears uninhabited. 



VENICE. I4I 

From time to time some living beings pass over the arches 
of the bridges, looking as unreal as the shadows of shadows. 
The silence is sepulchral. You hear only the cry of the gon- 
dolier, who warns his comrades to prevent a collision. This 
cry, repeated all around, is sharp and shrill, like the note of 
wild sea-birds. The green slime which swims on the surface 
of the canals floats at intervals and looks like dead bodies. 
The gate of a palace turns slowly on its hinges, some per- 
sons descend silently by the marble steps and enter a gon- 
dola. They resemble the inhabitants of a pantheon who go 
to repose in a coffin. Moving onward you enter the Grand 
Canal, and breathe an air more fresh and free ; you see by 
the light of the stars shafts of twisted columns, plinths, and 
pedestals, which mount above the water, Gothic roses, arched, 
arabesque, and Byzantine windows, arches of the Renaissance ; 
but floating by all these, the gondola loses itself anew 7 in the 
maze of narrow, watery streets, and all the beautiful decora- 
tions disappear from our view, as the rapid hours of pleasure 
vanish in the long sadness of life. 

The way was extremely long from the station to our hotel. 
The gondoliers continued on foot at each end of the gondola, 
propelling it with their two broad oars and repeating their 
sharp cries. At every step a corner, at every corner a bridge, 
at the foot of the bridge and at the corners of the houses 
flights of marble steps \ over the last white step the green 
water, and under the arches of the bridge and joined to the 
marble stairs the black gondolas covered with large dark 
cloths, resembling those of a bier. The most necessary ob- 



142 



VENICE. 



ject of Venetian existence is the gondola, and the gondola is 
also the most melancholy. Imagine an ellipse of black wood, 
with various relievos ; at one of the extremities a great hal- 
berd cut deeply with teeth, whose steel shines ominously, 
and at the other end a kind of little twisted tail ; in the cen- 
tre, like the ancient Venetian Tartanas, or small, light coast- 
ing-vessels, is the place of repose, lined inside with black vel- 
vet, covered with black cloth, with silk embroidery ; full of 
soft cushions of morocco leather, provided with four windows, 
of whose glasses, curtains, and blinds you can make what use 
you please ; all is dark, melancholy, mysterious, and romantic, 
all inviting to adventure, and leading the imagination to le- 
gendary stories, one or the other of which remain as the nat- 
ural consequence of all around, and above all of your insepar- 
able companion, the silent gondola. Each city has its char- 
acteristic. Thus Rome is the sublime city, Naples the pleas- 
ant city, Florence the academic city, Leghorn the mercantile 
city, Pisa the dead city, Bologna the musical city, Milan the 
civil city, and Venice the romantic city. The Moor and the 
Merchant of Venice of Shakespeare, the Angelo of Victor 
Hugo, the dramas of Byron, have all been inspired by these 
shadows, and have here, in these gondolas, their mysterious 
cradles. 

To-day Venice unites to the poetry of her arts the poetry 
of her recollections, and to the poetry of her recollections 
the poetry of her sadness. Her palaces are crumbling to de- 
cay, her statues fall in pieces from their pedestals, the smiling 
figures of her pictures vanish as the butterflies at the rude 



VENICE. I43 

breath of winter. The blow which occasioned the variation 
of human movement toward other regions, as a consequence 
of the apparition of America in the world, and the discovery 
of the Cape of Good Hope; the wound which ruined her com- 
merce is not of a nature to be cured by her recent liberty, be- 
cause liberty can not balance or undo geographical fatalities. 
Venice is dying. Only in place of dying as an outcast in an 
Austrian dungeon, she dies like an honored matron in the 
bosom of her home and surrounded by her children. Venice 
fell at the foot of the cradle of America, like Iphigenia at the 
foot of the cradle of Greece. The paths of humanity are 
strewed with victims, and progress is not exempted from this 
law of necessity. Life is nourished upon death. But on this 
account it is not the less sad to see a city perish — a city 
whose Doges had the imperial crown of Byzantium so often 
in their hands, and repelled it by the Phrygian cap of the old 
Republic ; to see a city fall whose standard terrified the Turks, 
and awakened the powers and energies of labor and com- 
merce ; to behold the death of a city whose liberties are the 
most ancient of the Christian era, and who alone has been the 
England of the Middle Ages ; to watch the slow decay of a 
city who in her cups of crystal, in her bacchanalian banquets, 
in her sensual songs, in her coral garlands and sea flowers, 
brought to our hearts and imaginations the immortal aroma 
of the Renaissance. How I regretted in that voyage through 
the streets of Venice that I was not a poet or an orator, or a 
writer of any merit — that I could not lament with eloquence 
the death of that city unique in the world ! Ideas of mourn- 



144 



VENICE. 



ing and desolation only were inspired by those floating cof- 
fins, those sombre palaces, the magnificent half- ruined win- 
dows, the tortuous labyrinth of narrow streets and gloomy 
canals, the shadows outlined on the high bridges, the broken 
steps of marble kissed by the wavelets, the murmur of the 
water like tear falling on tear, and the cries of the gondoliers, 
which sounded like a wail repeated by another lament. 

We stopped at a hotel on the Grand Canal, opposite the 
Church of Santa Maria della Salute, where we purposed re- 
maining, very near the Square of St. Mark. At this point the 
breadth of the canal is that of an arm of the sea. Its waters 
are as clear as the sun-illumined daylight, and the phosphor- 
escence left by the oars and keel leave around broad white 
ribbon-like bands of moonlight. On coming out of the nar- 
row canals into that broad expanse, many gondolas were be- 
ing directed toward the Rialto, lighted by Venetian lanterns, 
to be compared only to garlands of luminous flowers. This 
magical illumination showed vividly in the obscurity of the 
night, and was repeated in the transparency of the waters. 
From the gondolas came a solemn and most harmonious 
choir, accompanied by excellent instrumental music : a mys- 
terious melody, increased and softened by the sound-conduct- 
ing properties of the air and of the lagunes. After having 
made that strange journey, after having threaded that strange 
series of winding canals, in which Venice seemed one of 
those mystic towns painted by the artists of the Middle Ages 
on the walls of cemeteries to represent Inferno ; seeing my- 
self in the Grand Canal, among that great crowd of monu- 



VENICE. I4S 



ments rising from the limpid waters under the transparent 
heavens, showing the white marble churches illumined by the 
starlight, and looking like mountains of snow ; beholding the 
gondolas rapidly gliding along, a floating festival consecrated 
to art; drinking in that music, that delicious harmony in the 
waves, of the wind, and of the lagune, I believed myself in an- 
cient Venice — in her who brought to her shores the riches and 
the colors of the East; in her who listened to the serenades 
of Leonardo di Vinci ; in her who lent the shades of the rain- 
bow to the palette of Titian • in her who loved laughter and 
merriment \ in her who put the Empire of Constantine at her 
feet like a slave, and as a companion at her side, Greece, the 
land of poets. But the serenade died away in the distance, 
the lights were lost in the windings of the canal, the lagune 
sunk again into profound silence, and the turrets of the neigh- 
boring churches rung out the hour of nightfall with elegiac 
melancholy. 

It seemed too long to wait for the daylight that I might 
see Venice. Of the arts, I confess that in my opinion the 
most wonderful and impressive is that of architecture. The 
stones of Venice, shaped by design as the notes of a piece of 
music, or the parts of a discourse, where beauty and harmony 
are both expressed, give pure and intellectual* pleasure. The 
great lines, the broad spaces, the ambitious arches, the aerial 
cupolas, the columns with their adornments, the galleries with 
their perspectives, the court-yards and their cloisters, force 
upon the mind profound meditations, and always express the 
genius of the age with its symbolical character. I admire great- 

G 



146 VENICE. 



ly the Grecian architecture, its soberness, its severe simplici- 
ty, its infinite gracefulness, the facility with which it expresses 
great sentiments with small means, and attains to beauty 
without doing violence to form, putting a light frieze, squared, 
on four fronts of intercolumniations, the whole being in per- 
fect harmony and proportion. I also admire the Romans, 
who placed, one over the other, three kinds of architecture in 
their monuments, as they placed one above another the three 
ages of history in their code of laws and in their civilization. 
And I shall never forget the great dome of the Pantheon 
where Paganism expired, nor the triumphal arches and mag- 
nificent gates of the new age of the world. Above all, the 
sentiment with which ancient art always inspires me is a pro- 
found admiration for simplicity of form, and for a resemblance 
to nature in expression. But this enthusiasm for ancient art 
does not prevent me from doing justice to all the bold and 
striking beauties of architecture. Nothing is more illiberal 
than the exclusiveness of art. The architects of the past age 
— those destitute of refined taste — in their great dislike of the 
Gothic, succeeded in erecting some grand buildings, not such 
as could speak to the imagination, but dumb, severe, rigid 
with all the stiffness of death. There are styles of architect- 
ure distinguished by the knowledge they express, by their 
complete subjection to the laws of harmony and proportion 
— such are the Greek and the Roman. Over these centuries 
have passed, and other things more destructive than ages — the 
unthinking and devastating rage of men ; but that has been 
unable to prevail against their imperturbable strength and 



VENICE. I4 y 

stability. Doubtless there are architectures distinguished by 
their expression, such as the Oriental and the Gothic. Venice 
appears in Granada, because Venice has an exclusive and 
suitable architecture, born of her peculiar historical circum- 
stances, and representative of the ministry exercised by her 
between the East and the West. In like manner the people 
of Granada, always preserving that Moorish character which ar- 
rived at perfection in the mosque of Cordova, approached the 
Gothic i the Venetians, preserving the Byzantine and Gothic 
styles, general in the Middle Ages, flung over them like a gold- 
en veil the rich jewels of the East. Thus Venice has created 
this series of monuments that are the wonder of wonders by 
their variety and their riches. If you go and examine them 
with Vitruvius in your hand, with the rules of Vignola in 
your mind, taking with you a square and compass, submitting 
them" to a rigid mathematical examination, demanding from 
them a blind obedience to the laws of proportional harmony, 
ready to feel indignant if you see a gallery supported by iron- 
work, or a heavy column placed upon a slender one, as if rid- 
iculing the general principles of gravity — if -you see that a 
mass of marble weighs like a mountain over the delicate tra- 
cery of a light aerial gallery — if you place mathematics over 
all and above all, you do not appreciate those edifices of the 
Middle Ages, that above all and before all place the wealth 
of expression, the riches of greatness, far-fetched and hyper- 
bolical perhaps, but at the same time extremely beautiful. 
Whenever the arts unfold themselves, they strongly influence 
their surroundings. Venice is a magician, who obliges artists 



148 VENICE. 



to follow her, and impresses her kiss of fire on their foreheads. 
The artists of the fifteenth century built severe edifices in 
Rome, at the same time that the florid Gothic expanded its 
open-work roses in all Europe as the first flowers of the April 
of the Renaissance • and the Venetian architects at the end 
of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth, 
when the classic art had subdued it, without failing to follow 
it, crowned the friezes of their monuments, the cusps of their 
towers, the roofs of their palaces with ornaments and enamel- 
ed chiselings, always of the Oriental and Venetian character. 
Let us go then and look at Venice. Our gondola glides 
over the Grand Canal, the waters are of an emerald green, the 
heavens of a turquoise blue, the banks of sand are tinged 
with gold, the houses on the neighboring islets are bright and 
many colored, and the marble churches are so'transparent that 
they look like churches of crystal ; the sun gilds all ob'jects 
with its rays. The beauties of nature and the soft breeze per- 
fumed with the aromas of spring, with the saline exhalations 
of the sea, fresh and invigorating, invite you with their volup- 
tuous caresses to the infinite joys of existence. We have 
time to admire this Grand Canal which the Venetian paint- 
ers reproduced in all manners, from the dawn of the school 
with Carpaccio to its extinction with Canalletto, and have im- 
pressed indelibly on the retinas of the lovers of art. It is 
easy to see with a rapid glance that from the heavy Byzantine 
buildings to the more elegant structures of the sixteenth cent- 
ury, and from those of the sixteenth century to the motley 
edifices of the decadence, in company with all kinds of Gothic 



VENICE. I49 



constructions, ornamented with Syrian and Arab garlands — 
the history of the art is displayed in two broad marble walls 
on one and on the other side of the canal, illumined by the 
reflections of the water and by the tints of the sky. 

In every town you first look for a monument or point where- 
on to fix attention. In Seville, the Cathedral ; in Granada, 
the Alhambra ; in Cordova, the Mezquita ; in Rome, the Col- 
iseum ; in Naples, Vesuvius \ in Pisa, the Campo Santo ; in 
Florence, La Piazza della Signoria, and in Venice the Square 
of Saint Mark. We arrive at the foot of its magnificent flight 
of steps — we remain there in delighted astonishment. It is not 
possible to describe Venice. Our language has not words 
enough to paint so rich a picture. At least I can not attempt 
it. One must see and feel and admire, and steep the eyes in 
those colors, and absorb that beauty in all the pores — and 
then be silent. 

I must confide in the goodness of my readers, and hope 
they will excuse me for so ill describing this place. There is 
indeed a superb panorama before my eyes and a feeble pen 
in my hand. In the first place, the lagune, splendidly illu- 
minated by the heavens, and the sun which borders it with 
his rays; at the north is the mouth of the Grand Canal, with 
its rows of palaces. At the extreme right of the mouth is the 
marble church of Santa Maria della Salute, whose white cu- 
polas are outlined wonderfully in the lustrous air. Before the 
church, elevated on a graceful tower, is a great sphere of 
gilded bronze, with an angel of dark bronze on the top. At 
the left side of the canal is a terrace, blooming with gay 



i5° 



VENICE. 



spring flowers and butterflies ; near is a little square and the 
palace of Sansovino, sculptured like a work of Cellini, and 
surmounted by a group of statues. The palace of the Doge 
at the other end, resting its mass of red and white marble on 
a double gallery of Gothic arches, interlaced by a capricious 
arrangement of oriels, and adorned at the upper part of the 
columns with Byzantine sculptures, which harmonize and 
mingle admirably with the diadem of sharp triangles and the 
airy belfry above. Before these two monuments, the two col- 
umns of Oriental granite, two colossal monoliths, and, above, 
the crocodile of St. Theodore and the lion of St. Mark, which 
seem to exhale hot breath from their open mouths ; in the 
background, to the left, the Campanile, light and elegant as 
our Giralda, paved by a marvelously sculptured tribune, and 
crowned by an angel standing on a point and raising his 
wings on high. Farther on, at the right side, the Basilica — 
Oriental, Gothic, Greek, Byzantine, Moorish — a mixture of 
all orders of architecture, an epitome of all epochs, its blue 
arches sown with stars, its columns of different colored jas- 
per, its statues and its fantastic bell-towers ; the four horses 
of Corinth above the door, mosaics of Venetian glass in the 
recesses, from the golden groundwork of which wonderful 
figures of all colors detach themselves ; the cupolas above, 
small copies of those of Santa Sophia, like an apparition of 
Asia ; and in the vast proportions of that panorama, the 
Riva degli Schiavoni filled with vessels, realized by the pict- 
uresque costumes of the Turks and the Greeks, by the great 
Venetian population continually passing in that wide street. 



VENICE. . I g I 



Beyond the isle of San Giorgio, with its church of red and 
white marble ; the Giudecia, with its buildings of all the col- 
ors of the rainbow ; San Lazzaro, with its Armenian convent, 
whose Oriental towers look like the curled sail of a huge ves- 
sel ; the Lido, with its groves of trees which touch the La- 
gune with their branches, the nightingales filling the air with 
melody, the gardens like floating islands, or gigantic bou- 
quets flung upon the water, all crossed by the blue stripes of 
the canals, all varied by colors, and gilded or silvered by the 
sand-banks, all diversified by the contrast between the white 
lateen sails and the black Venetian gondolas which glide 
around, all lulled by the waves of the Adriatic ; the Alps in 
the distant West, resembling an army of celestial pyramids, 
and in the far East, like an eternal music, the wind which 
comes from the shores of Greece. It is unequaled in the 
world ! 

How many lovely cities there are in Italy ! Each one con- 
tains a marvel, and each marvel has its particular character. 
When going from Rome to Naples, you do not find yourself 
in another land, but in another planet. The cemetery of 
Pisa and the cemetery of Bologna are both magnificent ; but 
there is as great a difference between them as between the 
Pantheon of Agrippa and the Cathedral of Milan. You 
travel from Florence to Pisa in two hours, from Pisa to Leg- 
horn in half an hour, and between each of these towns, their 
streets and monuments, there is an abyss of difference. The 
magnificent leaning tower of Pisa seems to have been con- 
structed at a thousand leagues distant from the place which 



152 VENICE, 



contains the divine rotunda of Santa Maria dei Fiori at Flor- 
ence. Each of these cities has its especial school of painting, 
and its especial kind of architecture. Each of them has pro- 
duced a genius which it unfolds, in exchange for the present 
of existence — the gift of immortality. Pisa boasts of a Nic- 
olas, who adorned the Renaissance by two ages of anticipa- 
tion, making marble obey the efforts of his chisel ; Bologna 
had her John, who delayed for a time the decadence of sculp- 
ture \ Fiesoli a Fra Angelico, who painted angels with the 
same graphic facility with which Plato described pure ideas ; 
and men kneel before the Virgins produced by his pencil be- 
tween the limits of two such ages as the fourteenth and the 
fifteenth centuries, which are the limits of two worlds, sym- 
bolizing the end of the mystic ages. Venice is the mother 
of Titian, Verona of Paul Cagliari, Florence of Michael An- 
gelo, and Rome may call herself, by the Transfiguration of 
Raphael, the Sibyls, the Galatea of the Farnese, the Madon- 
na of Foligno, and the Isaiah, the city of Raphael. From 
whence has arisen this greatness ? From the decentralization 
of governments, from the liberty of republics, from municipal 
independence. There is only in history one epoch superior 
to that epoch, one people more illustrious than her people — 
Greece. But the secret of her greatness is the same as that 
of the greatness of Italy. Michael Angelo is one of those 
Titans who raised broken and calcined masses, placed them 
one above the other to scale the heavens; his foreheads show 
the wrecks of the tempest which have crossed them, search- 
ing alone and by solitary paths the regions of the infinite. 



VENICE. I53 



When Michael Angelo saw the liberties of his country expire, 
he carved a most beautiful and melancholy figure, gave it the 
Grecian perfection of form, and Christian sorrow in the ex- 
pression ; closed its eyes, extended it on a bier, and called 
it "Night." The loss of liberty was the death of Venice, the 
death of Milan, the death of Pisa, the night of Italy. Every 
where liberty or the absence of liberty moulds society, as 
God is visible in the relations of the planets. 

G2 



Chapter VI I. 

ON THE LAGUNES. 

It is light at last ! At length we have that fluid only com- 
parable to thought, which illuminates and vivifies. How I 
reveled in the ether from a cloudless heaven, reflected by a 
lake without shadow ! I wished to see my own mind, to be 
able to comprehend my own being, under the new and 
strange aspect flung over all things by this Oriental splendor. 
We ourselves are the darkest and most incomprehensible of 
existing creatures. Why is not my reason as clear as the 
sun ? After all, the light of the great star would be lost, as 
inaudible music, if it did not brighten the human face. Why 
is not my spirit as diaphanous as those celestial waters, in 
whose limpid surface are repeated with all their Asiatic beau- 
ty, with all their Grecian elegance and proportions, the pal- 
aces of Venice? After all, the universe would be like a 
blank or a closed book if its pages were not filled with hu- 
man sentiments. Why was not the horizon of my thoughts 
as vast as the horizon before me? All things would be but 
the shadows of shadows if they were not animated by a soul. 
Take the spirit from the planet, and then tell me for whom 
warble the birds among the trees, whose leafy branches touch 
the water, and for whom do these flowers, which now drink 



ON THE LAGUNES. I55 

the delicious juices of the spring, exhale their incense? 
Things would be without meaning if destitute of vitality — 
hieroglyphics without readers or interpreters. The universe 
without a spirit would be, at the least, a theatre without act- 
ors. But the spirit — what interior light has it ? 

I know not in history any epoch so serious and important 
as ours. The beliefs created and fostered by five centuries 
of faith and martyrdom have fallen in three ages of analysis. 
Many and great changes are perhaps drawing near, and we 
know not what another day may bring forth. The bell which 
now sounds the hour of vespers, the organ which now accom- 
panies the litany of the monks, the image now venerated by 
the mariners of the Adriatic, will soon pass away, like the 
hymns of ancient Greece, like the bass-reliefs of the Parthe- 
non : objects of artistic admiration, but not of religious wor- 
ship. Here is heard rising from the waters an elegiac lam- 
entation, only comparable to that of the sirens of old, when 
they heard from the lips of the Nazarene that the world was 
called to a new faith, the evidences of which were macerations 
and penitence. The god-Spirit saw rising against his power 
and against his word clouds of new ideas as menacing as 
those which dethroned and destroyed the god-Nature. What 
interior light has the spirit in this supreme crisis ? 

Such thoughts as these arose in my mind one evening in 
the month of May on the splendid shore of the marvelous la- 
gune of St. Mark, before the mouth of the Grand Canal of 
Venice, on the Isle of St. Lazzaro, at the gate of the Arme- 
nian Convent. The sun was just sinking behind the Giudeeia, 



iS6 



ON THE LAGUNES. 



and gilded with his last rays the spires of the churches and 
the Oriental domes of the Great Basilica; the black gondo- 
las, skimming along the blue waters, moved rapidly in all di- 
rections like fantastic living creatures ; in front were ranged 
the magnificent Venetian palaces, enameled and beautified 
by the arts ; on one side stretched the Lido, like a floating 
garden of luxuriant vegetation, blooming with flowers ; and 
all around rose the islands, in which the trees seemed to 
have their roots in the water, and between their foliage were 
glimpses of beautiful and stately buildings, looking as if an- 
chored in that sea of indelible recollections and of eternal 
poetry. One must have beheld all that loveliness to be able 
to comprehend the effect of the sunset on the lagunes ; now 
the waters are illumined by white phosphoric tracks, now rose 
the first stars of the evening, and now the first lights ap- 
peared in the windows and the streets of the city ; now these 
lights were tremblingly reflected in the canals ; now the last 
strokes of the vesper bell sounded in the sweet air and min- 
gled with the love songs of the gondoliers and the psalmody 
of the convents — the voices of the spirit in harmony with voices 
of the universe in the heavens. 

While absorbed in the contemplation of so much beauty, a 
monk approached me to say that the hour drew near for clos- 
ing the gate of the convent. That seemed reasonable, but did 
not reconcile me to departure. I felt an unconquerable de- 
sire to remain there, the closing time had not quite arrived, 
and my gondola was ready to carry me to the town, about 
three kilometres distant from St. Lazzaro. The Armenian 



ON THE LAGUNES. IS7 

monks sell Oriental curiosities and works of art; I am not 
quite a stranger to their language, and I made use of my 
knowledge as a contrivance to prolong my stay in so delight- 
ful a spot. 

Immediately the monk forgot the gate, and began to talk 
about study and literature. By degrees the conversation took 
a religious turn. I have always felt an insuperable impetus 
to diffuse my ideas and opinions among the masses ; but I 
never fall into the temptation of endeavoring to convince or 
persuade those with whom I speak in private. As I draw a 
broad line between ordinary language and oratorical language, 
I draw another line between the numerous hearers and the 
one hearer with whom I try to keep up a conversation. But I 
have observed that if I never attempt to convince or persuade 
in ordinary life, many of my acquaintances, I know not where- 
fore, fall into the error of trying to convince and persuade me. 

The person with whom I was conversing was a young man, 
a Turk by birth, by religion a Catholic, by his sect an Ar- 
menian, by enthusiasm a monk ; Oriental in his language, 
which was shown with glowing images, a Venetian by tact and 
hospitality ; in the depths of his conscience a mystic, like an 
Arabian sectarian, but in his intercourse with his fellow-creat- 
ures extremely tolerant, and perfectly in harmony with the 
character of our age. He was ill, very ill, and was quite aware 
of his approaching death. This knowledge produced a nat- 
ural melancholy, visible in his ideas, which were as severe as 
morality, as solemn as worship, as poetic as the land where 
he was born and the earth on which he was about to die, and 



158 ON THE LAGUNES. 

gave him an infinite perspective of eternity. The conversa- 
tion I held with him made so lasting an impression on my 
mind that I can not forget it, and will repeat a portion which 
much interested me. Many of his thoughts still strengthen 
me in my internal combats, and increase my hope in a moral 
renovation analogous to social renovations. The discussion 
between us made many doubts vanish, which had heretofore 
passed like shadows through my soul. 

"Do you believe," said he to me, "that our moral condition 
will continue? Do you think we could for so long a time have 
borne a dead faith in our consciences ? All dead ideas must 
kill the spirit which contains them, as the dead embryo would 
destroy that which incloses it." 

" I have already said so several times," I replied. " I do 
not believe that the conscience can be maintained alive in the 
bosom of a faith which is completely dead. The spirit is 
analogous to nature. And nature does not annihilate — it 
transforms \ it does not kill — it renews. The spirit must be 
renovated in the renovation of society." 

"Renovated !" he exclaimed. "And how will you attempt 
to create a new religion ? Where should you find the apostles 
who preached, the martyrs who died, where the necessary 
doctrines, the indispensable sacrifices to a religious transfor- 
mation? The tree of faith is watered with blood. Humanity, 
in our epoch, holds labor as a vocation ; it does not consider 
martyrdom a vocation, as it did in the time of our Redeemer. 
You may drain off even to exhaustion the vital power spent 
over the machines of labor, you will not find one drop of 



ON THE LAGUNES. I59 

blood before the altars of faith. The people of to-day ap- 
pear athletes full of physical energy, but wholly deficient 
in soul. 

" Miracles will not be performed if people do not feel with- 
in them the germ of great sentiments. They have ascended 
the heavens and have snatched the lightning, for they have 
sufficient moral stature to touch the clouds with their heads. 
The times of decadence neither create nor invent nor labor. 
Discouragement and decrepitude are felt in all spheres of ac- 
tivity and in all manifestations of life." 

" But I have heard it remarked that people do not grow if 
they have no ideal." 

" It is true. But I think that the ideal should not give birth 
to fancy and sentiment alone, but to reason. Your ideal is 
for the imagination only. And, in times of reflection, ideals 
which are but the offspring of fancy and custom die, as the 
flowers in the season of fruit." 

" You do not believe in miracles ?" 

"We do not speak of our individual opinions," I answered, 
"for then our debate would be a dispute ; we speak of some- 
thing higher — we speak of the crisis which at this time is pass- 
ing over the human spirit. Our own ideas are of less value in 
comparison with the infinite soul of humanity than the drops 
suspended from this oar are compared with the immensity of 
the ocean." 

"Very well, but our age does not believe in miracles." 

"It is right Its acquaintance with natural laws has con- 
vinced it that these laws can not be for a moment interrupted. 



160 ON THE LAGUNES. 

But here is the root of my thesis. You must neither invent 
nor maintain a religious ideal in absolute opposition to science. 
The lowest of our faculties — sensibility and fancy — are moved 
at the sound of the bell, at the sight of the sacred images, at 
the echo of the organ which raises a hymn to the heavens, at 
beholding those wonderful Basilicas, like that of St. Mark, 
adorned with mosaics wherein color exhausts its shades, and 
crowded with works in which art exhausts its inspirations — 
monuments in whose vaults have been heard the supplications 
of ten centuries, and under whose pavements repose the bones 
of innumerable generations ; but, though you may be a poet, 
though you be moved at these things, reason penetrates 
through dreams and harmonies ; they shall vanish with their 
cold but incontestable affirmations, leaving you in a perpetual 
struggle between sensibility and understanding — a struggle 
which must terminate if we are to be sovereigns of nature, 
submitting only to truth and science." 

"The struggle, oh! the struggle shall be terminated by 
faith." 

"But faith can not contradict probable or evident truths. 
The ancient gods smiled on the heights of hills crowned with 
temples and myrtle groves on the shores of seas which seemed 
to sleep under their protection, among choirs of poets, over an 
artistic and believing people ; but one day science demon- 
strated that those divinities were contrary to reason, and, in 
spite of having heroic and invincible peoples, like the Ro- 
mans, to support them, they all died together at the breath of 
a new doctrine." 



ON THE LAGUNES. 161 

"But with those divinities died the societies that persona- 
ted them." 

" They did not die ; they were transformed. Did the Ro- 
man law die ? Did that classic literature die which is still 
the model in our academies? Did those plastic arts die 
which we so often imitate and repeat? Did even those lan- 
guages die to whose wise combinations we owe all our scien- 
tific nomenclature ? The only thing which perished was the 
only thing which believed itself imperishable, the god or the 
gods of that world." 

" And how many tears, how much blood it cost to found 
the new faith !" replied the priest. " The world reveled in 
vicious orgies. That Rome, once so powerful, let fall the 
sword of battle to hold the cup of bacchanalian festivals. 
The veins of humanity were inflated with the cancerous wine 
of all concupiscence. To cure such evils nothing less was 
necessary than the irruption of barbarians and the dethrone- 
ment of Rome." 

" See where you go with the implacable logic of your de- 
ductions : to weep the death of Paganism, you, a Catholic 
priest ! Surely in no part of the earth is the soul of the artist 
so much moved at the disappearance of those beautiful be- 
ings, imagined by the poets, and in the marble enriched by 
sculpture, as here, in this country, at the murmur of the 
waves of the Adriatic under that heaven which reflects its 
beauty. But if organisms correspond to the chemico-physico 
condition of the planet, religions also correspond to the 
moral condition of the spirit. The world follows its own way 



jfa ON THE LAGUNES. 

and life independent of our abstract conceptions of this exist- 
ence. And God exists independent of the relation established 
between His incommunicable Being and our spirits. At 
present we do not comprehend the world in the same manner 
as our fathers comprehended it. For them it was immova- 
ble; for us it revolves. For them the sun went round the 
earth ; for us the earth moves around the sun. Has nature 
changed because our conceptions of her have altered ? Nei- 
ther has God changed because our conceptions of Him have 
been modified. The good, the true, the beautiful exist, in- 
dependent of all the opinions people form regarding them. 
In order to approach the ideal, we have but to learn the 
true, in science as in conscience, and realize with absolute 
disinterestedness the good in every thing. Religions have 
served to educate humanity progressively. Their infinite 
hopes, their salutary terrors, awaken man from the bosom of 
nature in which he is sleeping to raise him to an interior life 
much purer and much more exalted. The fragile human 
spirit thus obtained the idea of the infinite, and felt thus the 
breath of the divine, as if creating it anew, and in a certain 
sense redeeming it. There is no reason to doubt it ; if the 
religion of nature was a progress respecting fetichism, and if 
the religion of the spirit was a progress respecting the relig- 
ion of nature, why, why imagine, why believe that this per- 
manent revelation has become indifferent or has retrograded ?" 
" Do you suppose that there can happen any other or any 
further revelation ? God, by an act of His will, by a breath of 
His nostrils, created the world without evil, and, in the world, 



ON THE LAGUNES. 



163 



man without sin ; the guilt falls from the spirit made free 
upon nature made its slave, sullies the brightness of creation 
and absorbs humanity; children of men are born subject to 
sin like their fathers, and the sin is subject to the chastise- 
ment created by generations and generations of feeble be- 
ings, whose bodies are sadly destroyed by pleasure, and 
whose souls vanish as shadows of shadows in the abyss ; till 
that same God, known only to one people, descends in mercy 
to redeem the iniquities of all men, and to reveal himself to 
all men ; and henceforth the air is filled with guardian an- 
gels, saints are found for the altars, nature is regenerated by 
the purity of the Virgin Mother, the spirit enlightened by the 
divine Word, and the hopes of immortality, shining beyond 
the tomb, strengthen us with the energy of a life which ex- 
pands itself into eternity." 

"God forbid I should contradict any dogma. I respect 
them all profoundly. But I deny that they can be sustained 
by an external authority, powerful and coercive, in this age of 
liberty and reason. Faith must of necessity spring sponta- 
neously from the soul. It must necessarily affect the con- 
science, and the conscience the will. Thus the sentiment 
becomes ingrafted in the mind, and the spirit mingles and 
diffuses itself with the life, and the life will be true and relig- 
ious, and the standard of religion will be a living ideal." 
" But you do not any where see this realized. ,, 
"No; I see, on the contrary, that while civilization most 
inclines to liberty, religious sects most incline to authority. 
I see that while the ideas of democratic equality take root 



1 64 OX THE LAGUXES. 

most profoundly in the social sphere, they pretend more in 
the social sphere to deify absurd privileges, opposed to all 
that is fundamental in our nature. I see plainly that the re- 
verse occurred in Christian times, in that God humiliated 
Himself even to repair the fallen nature of men; men, calling 
themselves infallible, aspired to exalt themselves, so as even 
to improve the nature of God. I see all pervaded by ego- 
tism and the utilitarian feeling, when it has become such a 
necessity for us that the ideal part of our nature, that upon 
which the heavens only look, should awake and live. Relig- 
ious sentiments, which ought to be purely spiritual, seem 
turning to mechanical forces ; and the priests, who should 
hold in their hands and reflect upon our heads the light of 
the ideal, are but simple functionaries of the State. I see all 
this with sorrow, for I would that in the aridity and desola- 
tion of our lives we should be able to shed some drops of 
celestial dew to moisten our parched lips, burning with thirst 
for the infinite." 

" But the belief necessitates a definition which embodies 
it; the definition an authority which imposes and divulges it; 
the authority a personification which represents it. Faith 
should not be without dogma ; the dogma would not main- 
tain itself without definition ; the definition without the 
church ; the church without the Pope ; the Pope without the 
Divine Spirit, which should communicate to him its own infal- 
libility/' 

" Do you believe that God has chosen a person apart, and 
privileged, to communicate the truth? I am yet more believ- 



ON THE LAGUNES. 



165 



ing. I believe that as He has extended His light to all orbs, 
He has given His reason to all spirits. I believe that as He 
has endowed us with vision by which to behold the external 
world — and as this vision can not be by any authority either 
replaced or substituted — He has given us a conscience with 
which to communicate with the interior world, and that con- 
science can not be replaced or substituted by any authority. 
I believe we all see the light, that we all acknowledge it; 
and that darkness of soul and understanding is as rare and 
exceptional as are those who have been blind from their 
birth. Creatures are immersed in universal life ; planets and 
suns float in ether ; human souls exist in the Eternal. I be- 
lieve more ; I believe that revelation is eternal, inherent, pro- 
gressive through all ages ; having for its organs all philoso- 
phers and poets, who have revealed a truth, and those mar- 
tyrs who for a truth have died. Thus history illumines itself, 
life elevates itself to the infinite, the conscience becomes col- 
ored by absolute truth, as the iron in the fire. Thus our sen- 
timents unite in all generations, and elevate us to the com- 
prehension of things more exalted ; thus alone we draw to our 
souls the human spirit, and in the human spirit refresh our 
souls. Thus alone we rise to God, and God communicates 
intimately with us. Thus only can we be true inhabitants of 
the Universe, true children of the Great Father, one and 
identical in all the succession of ages with the progressive 
development of the human spirit." 

" In no way can I conform to your ideas. They appear to 
me contrary to all truths and justificative of all error. I be- 



T 66 ON THE LAGUNES. 

lieve that one people only knew the true God in the ancient 
world — the Jewish nation \ and that only one society has 
preserved and propagated religion in the modern world — 
the Catholic Church. Beyond these two vast rays of light, 
extended through time as the Milky Way through space, 
I discover only darkness and obscurity which blind and 
stupefy." 

"And the rest of human labor has been lost? And from 
the rest of the human conscience God is absent ? What 
would you think of my reason if I should say that this gold- 
finch or this rose owe their life to the Creator, but not this 
fern or that bat ? If we divide into divine and not-divine, we 
should deliver up the world to Manicheism ; and the devil, 
with reason, would dispute with God a part of creation. If 
we divide humanity into elect and reprobate, we deliver up 
society to an arbitrary power more terrible than the antique 
Destiny. Nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which separately de- 
stroy, together form the vital atmosphere. So we can no 
more separate the various revelations of the true and the 
good, but all together compose the vital air of the human 
spirit. The prophets did not write in Judea alone — they 
alone did not drink of the waters of Jordan and Euphrates — 
they wrote also in India, and slaked their thirst with the wa- 
ters of the Ganges. To form ideas Jews have contributed, as 
well as the Egyptian priests, the magi of Babylon, and the 
sages of Persia. The idea is as the sap, as the blood, as the 
light, as the electric fluid, as the juices of the earth, as the 
gases of the atmosphere, as the dew of the planet. The idea 



ON THE LAGUNES. 



167 



recognizes neither nations nor sects nor churches ; it passes 
from the pagoda to the pyramid, and from the pyramid to the 
synagogue, and from the synagogue to the Basilica, and from 
the Basilica to the cathedral, and from the cathedral to the 
university, and from the university to parliament, with the ce- 
lerity of the lightning which thunders, illumines, burns, and 
purifies. Christianity has been equally prepared and ad- 
vanced by the mournful stanzas of Isaiah as by the philo- 
sophic dialogues of Plato. To the universal revelation each 
human race has brought its contingent. The Grecian people 
thought their life completely original, apart from ail other hu- 
man life, their gods purely national and domestic ; yet their 
chaste Diana had temples in Asia Minor, and their Bacchus, 
who represented the exaltation and delirium of life in the uni- 
verse, was intoxicated with the nectar distilled from Indian 
groves. When the Jew took refuge at the foot of his altars, 
thinking there he preserved his God and his religion removed 
from all Pagan temptations, Alexander went to disturb that 
sad monologue of a people, and to drag behind his war-char- 
iot the Greek divinities to the triumphal music of cymbals 
and Phrygian flutes — once awakeners of Hellenic gayety — in 
the bosom of sad, immobile, and pantheistic Asia. The ex- 
pectation of the Messiah was not a Hebraic hope only, it was 
also a universal hope. The Sibyl of Cumae conceived it in 
her grotto, by the shores of the voluptuous Tyrrhene Sea, in 
the days when Daniel counted on his fingers the weeks of 
years wanted to make up his number. And in Posilippo, under 
the shade of the tall elm-trees, festooned by vines, in sight of 



j6S on the laguxes. 

the foam -crested waves, from which rose the sweet voices 
of the Grecian sirens, among the bacchanalian dances, hearing 
the flageolet of the god Pan, and surrounded by the chorus 
of virgins who twined garlands of flowers upon the altars, 
smoking with the fragrance of myrrh — Virgil announced the 
universal redemption at the same time that the Baptist de- 
clared it, clothed with camel's-hair, mortified with sackcloth, 
in the grand desolation of the desert. Athens with her arts, 
Rome with her laws, Alexandria with her science, have con- 
tributed as much to the Christian revelation as Jerusalem 
with her God. Do not forget that these are evident truths, 
confirmed by all history. Be not as the Tew, who shuts him- 
self up in his Bible, and believes that since the creation of 
the human race not one single religious truth has been added 
to the Judaical doctrines. Christianity, more human, and at 
the same time more divine, has taken all the Bible, and has 
added to it the Gospel. Why shall not we add to the Gos- 
pel the Renaissance, Philosophy, and the Revolution, which 
have raised in the social sphere these three Christian words 
— Liberty, Equality, Fraternity ? Leonardo di Vinci painted 
Bacchus and the Baptist in his pictures, which represented 
the spring-time of that modern spirit. Raphael depicted in 
the lineaments of the Grecian goddesses the inspired and 
holy soul of the Christian virgins. Michael Angelo placed 
the two choirs of sibyls and of prophets on the vault of the t 
Sistine Chapel. The human spirit is like the universe ; one 
like God ; and God, Nature, and the Spirit are the eternal 
Trinity which illumine the pages of history. Let us not sep- 



ON THE LAGUNES. 



169 



arate from them — neither from the Spirit, nor from Nature, 
nor from God." 

These words, if they did not convince, at least moved my 
companion. I had excited myself in an extraordinary man- 
ner by the warmth of my own expressions. So I took the 
hand the young priest extended to me, pressed it, and left him 
absorbed in his own reflections. The night was calm and se- 
rene, the stars shone in the heavens and the phosphorus in 
the water, the breath of spring refreshed the. ambient air, and 
wafted the echoes of the town and country to the broad ex- 
panse of the lagune, inviting me to meditate on this evident 
truth — that nature continues tranquil, immovable, and beauti- 
ful, regardless of the disputes or discords of men. 

H 



Chapter VIII. 

THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

Do you really believe that Paganism has been rooted out 
and destroyed in this land of Rome? Near my lodgings 
stands proudly the Pantheon of all the gods. The Catholic 
genius has not been content with exalting it and binding it as 
a diadem to the Basilica, mother of all Christian Basilicas, 
but has also converted it into a temple of all the saints. 
Prayer is there hushed upon the lips. There enters too much 
light by the large unroofed circle which crowns the rotunda 
to suffer the soul to give itself up to meditation and prepara- 
tion for spiritual exercises. Consecrated, full of altars, con- 
verted into a church ; like the great mosque of Cordova, it 
protests against innovations, and sighs sorrowfully for its an- 
cient worship. 

Every thing is thus in Rome. Paganism has been trans- 
formed, but has not been destroyed. The months of the year 
and the days of the week preserve the numbers of the ancient 
divinities, of the ancient Caesars, of the ancient Roman nu- 
meration, and we have not dared to take the calendar of the 
French Republic, which appears to have been conceived in 
the bosom of creation. The two solstices of summer and 
winter we still celebrate with festivals analogous to the classic 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. I7I 

festivals. Adonis is born, dies, rises again, when the corn is 
sown, shoots, or is in ear. The feast of Candlemas, dedicated 
with many tapers to the Virgin, like the festivals of Lupercal, 
is consecrated to light. The Romans wave torches under the 
government of the Popes, just as the Pagans waved them un- 
der the dominion of the Caesars, and chanted hymns to the 
light, which have changed their form, but the essence of which 
is unaltered. When the Pope, seated on his chair of state, is 
carried on men's shoulders, enveloped in magnificent bro- 
cades, his head crowned with a jeweled tiara, in his hand the 
precious crosier, at his feet a mitred crowd, gay with many- 
colored mantles — one returns to the days of ancient story, 
when Oriental customs and Oriental luxury, introduced by 
the Caesars, came from Syria to the Eternal City. 

I certainly do not speak of this in order to deny or combat 
the virtue of the Catholic faith. What I purpose is to deny 
that originality which all those attribute to it who are igno- 
rant of the working of the antique spirit on Christianity, which 
was partly the cause of its continuation, and, up to a certain 
point, of its purification. The apotheosis of heroes has been 
replaced by the canonization of the saints. Any one might 
believe he was listening to a Catholic poet when he hears 
Lucanus say before the tomb of Pompey how the faithful 
went to pray over the dead who refused to offer incense to 
the gods of the Capitol. Is hell not a Pagan creation, as the 
demons were an invention of magic? Satan has passed 
through Deism before passing through Christianity. Christ 
is the fundamental conception of the Christian faith. The 



172 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



expectations of a Messiah were not the exclusive hopes of the 
race of Israel in the age of the coming of Christ — they were 
universal aspirations. When St. John wrote the Apocalypse, 
the Stoics also wrote theirs, and words of despair were uttered 
by two choirs at the same moment, and in Pagan heaven and 
Christian heaven alike is found religious terror at the speedy 
termination of the world. We have not banished from us the 
number of gods worshiped by the ancients. The gods have 
been converted into angels, says St. Augustine — 

" Deos quos nos familiarius angelos dicimus" 

Why then so much antipathy for the antique world, to those 
same ideas which are the heraldry of our nobility and the 
genealogy of our ideas ? Why, do we not even receive holy 
water? Do we not collect votive offerings in our chapels? 
Have we not processions according to the Greek custom? Do 
we not on the vigil of St. John kindle bonfires, after the fash- 
ion of the Rhodians, the Corinthians, the great founders of 
the Hellenic colonies? Our personality has not come by a 
sudden creation ; it is, like the planet we inhabit, the slow 
work of ages, the work of generations in their turn. So, when 
I see passing beneath the triumphal arches of marble, whose 
succession composes the Vatican — when I look upon the ma- 
jestic form of the Pope, amid so much luxury and the accla- 
mations of the people — I can not help acknowledging to my- 
self that Papal authority, so great and so universal, does not 
proceed from the Christian doctrine, so democratic, especially 
in its early ages, but from the superiority which antique Rome 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



173 



exercised by her power and her conquests over all the cities 
in the world. 

What domination can there be like the empire of Pius IX. ? 
It no longer is extensive on the earth. Revolution has di- 
vided his possessions, and has reduced them first to Rome, 
then to the Vatican. But no one can supplant him— no one 
who in the exaltation of his own faith could believe himself 
with power pre-eminent over the human conscience, and suf- 
ficient authority to interpret on the earth the sentiments and 
the will of the heavens. No Pope, but this one, has been bold 
enough to separate himself from the Universal Church, from 
the CEcumenical Council solemnly convoked, to proclaim a 
new dogma of faith, a dogma so transcendent as the dogma 
of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, and, moreover, to ex- 
cept a creature from general human laws, to add to Christian- 
ity — that veiled in such a manner the pure deistic idea of the 
Bible — another religion which exalted a creature to the heights 
where alone can shine the Creator. 

Pius IX. has reigned many years. His predecessor, the 
aged Gregory XVI., notwithstanding all his divine power over 
consciences, had not an equal authority over nature, and at a 
feast of the Ascension was seized with a severe constipation 
which rapidly brought him to the grave. Rossi thought he 
described this Pope in three words, calling him "an Austrian 
patriarch." But the election of a Pontiff appears to move the 
lips to murmur prayers, to surround the altars with clouds of 
incense, and to lead men to ask God in all manners for His 
divine light, indispensable to a suitable election \ and, not- 



174 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN, 



withstanding, for the election of Pius IX., regiments of artillery 
moved in the Marches, and vessels of the Imperial Austrian 
Marine on the waters of Ancona. If the maritime and land 
armies were moved, so perhaps were the angels of the celes- 
tial court. Not less in commotion were the embassadors, 
whose character of double-dealing and duplicity, if it gives 
them great aptitude to discourse with kings, ought not to be 
useful to them in communication with the heavens. Among 
the embassadors, those of great and exceptional influence 
were the embassadors of the courts of France and of Austria ; 
the one too timid, the other too daring. The Count Broglia 
spoke in the following terms to- the Sardinian Government of 
the representative of Louis Philippe in the days of the Con- 
clave: "The Count Rossi is of a feverish activity, and im- 
agines himself to have very nearly the power of the Holy 
Ghost." The French embassador opposed his veto to all the 
cardinals marked by their attachment for the Jesuits and for 
Austria \ in the same manner as the Austrian embassador op- 
posed his veto to all the cardinals stigmatized by an adher- 
ence to France and to the modern spirit. Among the num- 
ber of those that Austria was disposed to prohibit was count- 
ed the then Cardinal Mastai, now Pius IX. If the prince of 
the Church, charged to give this veto formally, had arrived in 
time at the Conclave, there never would have been a Mastai 
Pope. 

On the 14th of June, 1846, the cardinals directed their steps 
toward the Quirinal. Gregory XVI. had been buried but a 
few days previously, his corpse insulted, and his memory re- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



175 



viled by the people. The Conclave preferred the saloons of 
the Quirinal to those of the Vatican, because, while it hoped 
for the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in every place, it feared 
that in the palace, par excellence Pontifical, divine inspirations 
would not sufficiently counteract the effluvias of the fever. 
In the procession from the church where the Conclave was 
assembled, to the Quirinal where the Conclave was to sit in 
council, the cardinals were altogether deficient in the respect 
they owed to each other ; and as a few drops of rain began to 
fall, they entered the palace without order and without any 
composure. At length the hour for voting arrived. The 
Conclave was divided. There were various indispensable ex- 
aminations. In none of them resulted the number of thirty- 
seven votes necessary to enable a Pope to mount the throne, 
and from thence to interpret the will of Heaven. The last 
scrutiny took place after long delays. Pius IX. was the ex- 
aminer, and on him it devolved to read in a loud voice the 
numbers of the voters. Accordingly he drew forth the scraps 
of paper, unfolded and read them; his strength failed, his voice 
faltered, tears fell from his eyes, profound sobs convulsed his 
throat, until, at the end, fearful of fainting, he gave up the ex- 
amination to another cardinal, and, retiring to a place apart, 
covered his face with both hands. At the conclusion he had 
the thirty-seven votes indispensable to his proclamation as 
sovereign Pontiff. Before he was officially proclaimed, he 
turned to the cardinals, one by one, and begged, prayed, and 
insisted that they should remove that cup from his lips. He 
seemed to have been taken with a secret presentiment that 



176 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

he would be the last king on the temporal throne of St. Peter. 
The Conclave did not dare to accede to his desire, and con- 
firmed him in his high dignity. Pius IX. accepted, and, after 
having done so, he prostrated himself before an altar, and 
murmured many fervent prayers for the space of half an hour. 
Afterward he returned to the Sacred College, and the Holy 
Ghost descended on that head as its nest upon the earth. 

In times of decadence, power always searches for minds of 
a niggardly temperament, the undecided, and above all those 
who have passed their lives in a sort of twilight, without being 
able to determine for any of the bolder measures. Innocent 
III., in an epoch favorable to the Pontificate and to his own 
power and authority, imperiously ruled the world ; but in a pe- 
riod unfavorable to this same power, the firmness, the resolu- 
tion of Innocent — reproduced in Boniface VIII. — only served 
to bring upon the cheek of the Papacy the rude buffet of No- 
garet. Feeble and obscure, his debility and insignificance en- 
abled Mastai to keep apart from the great differences which 
had on a thousand occasions divided the Sacred College and 
the Conclave. His had been a varied existence. From be- 
ing an armed soldier, he became a spiritual warrior. His 
abode in Chili was worthy of a prophet, worthy of a martyr. 
But his ideas had always continued in the uncertainty of the 
dawn. If we examine his conduct after the manner of Espo- 
leto, Pius IX. was a Jesuit ; but if we scrutinize character, as 
would Imola, Pius IX. was a Liberal. This contradiction of 
ideas and character served him admirably to obtain the suf- 
frages of the College, and to exalt himself to the highest relig- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. T yy 

ious authority that can be exercised in our age, and which, 
notwithstanding its evident decay, serves yet to express its an- 
cient splendor. 

If the Cardinal Mastai desired the tiara, he did not demand 
it of his colleagues. Not one supplication, except to be al- 
lowed to reject it — no word which was not a renunciation and 
withdrawal. So it is not strange that some have compared 
Pius IX. with Sixtus V. There were relations between the 
ancestors of both Popes; rivalries in Rome, and rivalries much 
dreaded between the embassador of France and the Spanish 
embassador; emulation within the Sacred College, and an 
almost warlike rivalry between the family of Medici and that 
of the Farnese ; inquietude and fearful apprehension in all 
Italy ; peculiarities that, if they coincide with and are anal- 
ogous to the circumstances of the election of the reigning Pon- 
tiff, do not go so far as to confound two characters truly op- 
posed and contradictory; for the one was imperious and 
despotic, even to the constituting a Caesarian Papacy, and 
the other humble even to be the docile instrument, perhaps 
against his will, at all events against his conscience, of Jesu- 
itical depravity. 

Sixtus V. mounted the throne when the Renaissance was 
expiring, and the great Catholic reaction was approaching; 
Pius IX came to the Pontifical dignity when the reaction of 
the Holy Alliance was expiring, and the world was returning 
to revolutionary ideas. In the election of Pius IX., as in that 
of Sixtus V., that cardinal was successful whose triumph seem- 
ed the most improbable. None of the colleagues of either 

H 2 



178 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

had thought of them on entering, and although Pius was elect- 
ed simply by a majority, and Sixtus by unanimity and homage, 
both were able to pacify the adverse spirit in the Roman Con- 
clave and the rivalries of European politics. But here ends 
the analogy. 

Sixtus V. was educated on the mountains \ Pius IX. in the 
court ; Sixtus was the son of a gardener, and Pius the son of a 
noble ; Sixtus had adopted in his youth — almost in his child- 
hood — the habit of a monk, and Pius the uniform of a soldier; 
the youth of the one was passed in the severity and retirement 
of the cloister, the youth of the other in the freedom of society ; 
the former Pope was of a pure Sclavonian family, which took 
refuge on the shores of the Adriatic on flying from the Turks ; 
the present Pontiff is of a pure Italian stock, which, by the mod- 
est aid of retail commerce, by connections, by political ardor, 
and by warlike enterprise, raised itself to the dignity of the 
nobility ; Sixtus V. was a preacher \ his eloquence showed the 
temperature of his character, which was sanguine, bold, and 
unpolished ; Pius IX., too, is a preacher ; his eloquence is also 
abundant, but melodious and mellifluous \ the consciousness 
of power held possession of the mind of the great ancient 
Pope \ the habit of submission is the essential characteristic, 
of the reigning Pope, implacable before all powers, unyielding 
with all sovereigns when they are opposed to his opinions, 
and now completely submitting, after some feeble resistance, 
to the will of the reactionaries and the Jesuits. 

TJie mother of young Mastai gave him an excellent educa- 
tion. But a most terrible infirmity — epilepsy — prevented his 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. ^9 

education from bearing all the expected fruits. It was in the 
time of the wars of Napoleon and of his victories when Mas- 
tai began his youth and embraced the military career. But 
he loved adventures better than battles, and cared more about 
the color of his uniform than the temper of his sword. He 
loved poetry to excess, even devoting most of his time to its 
study ; and in poetry it is certain, from his character, that he 
preferred Metastasio to Dante. At last he renounced the 
military service, entered the Church, and applied himself to 
the duties of a preacher. His attractive figure, his majestic 
air, his prominent features, sweetened by a smile of the purr 
est benevolence, his nervous and impressionable nature, the 
rather sickly sensibility of his temperament, the liveliness of 
his poetic imagination, the tone of his voice — the most mel- 
low and sonorous I have ever heard, when, for instance, he 
intones the mass in St. Peter's, or gives the benediction in the 
Vatican — all these qualities secured him undoubted advan- 
tages as an orator, as one to be listened to and beloved by 
the multitude. Some still remember his nocturnal sermons in 
the public square, half-illumined by torches, with a great cru- 
cifix on his shoulder ; before him a discolored skull, on which 
was burning a yellow candle \ in his hands, at one moment 
the benediction of the Church, at another the malediction, 
with truly tragic gestures ; and on his lips an eloquence which 
charmed the Italian people because of its sentiment and po- 
etry. These brilliant gifts made him much admired in Chili, 
where he was attached to an apostolic mission. But in Chili 
his words could not excite souls as in Italy, because he was 



I So THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

deficient in a profound knowledge of the Spanish language, 
and in the mastery of its accent. Yet he speaks Spanish flu- 
ently, and to Spanish ears his accent sounds as if it were 
American. I have only heard him speak in Latin. He pre- 
sided over two great dioceses, and in both he observed a dif- 
ferent administration. In the first diocese he disinterred the 
body of a Liberal : conduct which drew upon him the odium of 
those districts, and he had to fly at the time of the first revo- 
lution, which burst forth in 1830-1 \ but in the second diocese 
he yielded to the influence of his family, all of them Liberal, 
and was tolerant and benevolent to Liberals. Such were the 
principal events of the life of the Pope before mounting the 
throne of the Papacy. 

Pius IX. still preserves the poetic passion of his youthful 
years. He loves the fine arts, like almost all the princes who 
have sat on the chair of St. Peter. There is much grace in 
his conversation, great sweetness in his face, much benevo- 
lence in his character, and in his voice all the charm of music. 
But his sudden impulses are dangerous, as they force him to 
rapid and inconsiderate changes — such as the flight from the 
Vatican in 1848. He sometimes acknowledges that he has 
lost himself by his impetuosity ; but he does not repent, be- 
lieving, reasonably enough, that repentances which come too 
late tend to nothing. In such times he reproves himself with 
expressions of bitter irony, which fall from his lips on his op- 
pressed heart. Irony and mockery are very remarkable in 
the conversation of Pius IX., touching even upon religious 
subjects. A Spanish embassador wished him on a certain oc- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. j%\ 

casion to canonize a saint of his country; and, in order to per- 
suade him, he told of numerous miracles the saint was report- 
ed to have performed. The Pope for his only reply asked one 
question — " Could he put the head on the shoulders of one 
decapitated, and make him speak and walk again?" a No, 
Holy Father, no, that would be too much." " That," rejoined . 
the Pope, " seems to me the only miracle that would be truly 
great, and I ought to tell you that as yet I have not happened 
to see it." 

Like all lovers of art, Pius IX. loves great emotions. His 
popularity and his triumphs delight him. I have beheld the 
Pope radiant with joy and satisfaction when receiving the 
homage of Catholic delegates from all nations — with the same 
sort of eagerness with which one expands the lungs, after 
coming from a suffocating air, to inhale the freshness and 
oxygen of a healthy atmosphere. All pomp and luxury, tiaras 
studded with brilliants, mantles strewn with showers of pearls, 
rich and costly crosses, all the adornments of his exalted of- 
fice, enchant him, as jewels and fine attire do a lady of high 
society. I shall not exaggerate this quality — as Petruccelli 
has done in his picture of Pius IX. — when I say that I ob- 
served how happy he looked when the crowd were pressing 
upon his steps and the Pontifical jewels shone on his majestic 
person. It is true that the wisest heads would be unsettled 
in such clouds of incense, at such servile adulation, the num- 
ber of bishops which surround him, the Oriental court which 
attends him, the choirs which sing his praises, the varieties of 
music which fill the air with harmony in his honor, the pil- 



1 82 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN, 

grims arrived from the most remote regions of the earth to 
hear the echo of his words — to catch the gesture of a benedic- 
tion, the furtive shadow of a smile — the infinite homage which 
makes of the solitary old man of the Vatican more than a 
privileged and exalted mortal, a living god on the face of the 
earth ! 

To startle the world with great audacity in the religious 
and political spheres was always his desire ; to leave an illus- 
trious name among men, as well as among sovereign Pontiffs, 
has been ever his ambition. He had no great eagerness to 
reconcile the Gospel with liberty. The pulpit of the people 
was turning to Christ, the hope and consolation of the op- 
pressed. The nails of His cross, the thorns of His crown, 
the gall of His cup, ceased to be the boast of the powerful, and 
became the true teacher of the humble. Democracy received 
on its forehead the sign of Christian baptism, and Christian- 
ity took the character of the great promoter of the democratic 
movement of this century. Joyous tremblings passed at the 
same time through the hearts of the pious, as well as through 
those of Liberal people. For those, it was impossible to be- 
lieve in the durability of a belief, compatible with all the 
transformations of ideas, and with the numerous unfoldings of 
the modern spirit. For those, the liberty which necessitates 
moral restraints more than material restraints, holds a rigor- 
ous security in the evangelical spirit, a spiritual counterpoise 
to the perils which might be engendered by its successes. 
The thought of reconciling the Gospel to liberty was a great 
idea. But if Pius IX. conceives great ideas with facility, he 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. m ^3 

also abandons them at the first obstacle ; and then, when he 
encounters obstacles to liberty, he yields in his efforts for lib- 
erty. Great error ! To renounce liberty because it may en- 
gender excesses would be to renounce the air because it is 
the element of winds and hurricanes ! 

The obstacles which restrained Pius IX. were principally 
those which arose in his court, and, indeed, among his court- 
iers. Thus it is that, in his Liberal tendencies, he found 
around him nothing but difficulties, and in his efforts at re- 
ligious reaction every facility and assistance. The Jesuits, 
who swore war to the death against him, put themselves at his 
orders and surrounded his throne. The European reaction, 
which had not forgiven him his advanced policy of 1847 an d 
1848, delivered to him the direction of its thoughts and of its 
conscience. The Pope was raised to be the High-Priest of 
the Holy Alliance. But his ambition was beyond this. His 
ambition was to found new dogmas, to bring a greater volume 
of divine ideas to the Church, and of exalted piety to the faith- 
ful ; to oppose with decided negatives the democratic and pro- 
gressive spirit; to assemble CEcumenical Councils after the 
manner of pious ages ; to create a new authority in the Church, 
and an absolute power over consciences which was not held 
in the preceding ages and will be unequaled in the future. 
Such was the desire of Pius IX. 

It is easy to understand that he designed to compensate the 
defeat in the political arena by a victory in the religious world. 
But, in order to attain this victory, it became necessary to con- 
form religious ideas to the spirit of the age, because ideas can 



!8 4 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN, 

not exist remote from the spirit of our epoch. An illustrious 
theological school had existed in Italy which treated of the 
harmony of religion and reason, of providence with freedom, 
of modern democracy with the ancient Pontificate, of the nat- 
ural law with the revealed law — in a word, of Catholicism 
with progress. An illustrious priest, of talents, perhaps, as 
profound as St. Thomas, and of equal enthusiasm for a theo- 
cratic society, in which the direction of the world should be 
confided to moral force and to theological creeds, spoke with 
tears in his eyes, and with sobbing voice, of all the moral 
ulcers in the Church. The separation between the clergy and 
the people, on account of the dead language spoken by the 
former ; the isolation of religious society, which flourished 
when supported by popular suffrage and free association ; the 
subservience of the civil powers, which* had converted the pure 
Christian spirit into instruments of tyranny with the higher 
classes and of vassalage in the lower ; the tendency of the 
priesthood to close its conscience to the light of new ideas 
and its mind to the consideration of new social changes — all 
this and more he said ; but he found the Pontifical Court al- 
ways deaf to the voice of the popular desire. 

Another priest, inferior in policy but not in greatness, 
wished to separate the Church of the State from sects, to ele- 
vate her to the true ideal of humanity. According to this 
man, reason and revelation were identical, and Catholicism 
universal, not only for what it embraces that is divine, but also 
for what it has that is human ; the evangelical doctrines and 
the modern ideas are one in essence ; the cause of the divorce 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 185 

between the Church and the age being the bad understanding 
caused by the conduct of the clergy, as well as by the turbu- 
lent ideas of the revolution. But this most eloquent priest 
would have applied energetic remedies to the evils of the 
Church : to the temporal power, the separation of civil life and 
ecclesiastical life ; to the reactionary education of the clergy, 
a scientific education; to Jesuitism, which maintains a great 
number of mechanical springs and contrivances to move the 
people, the pure moral conscience which he directed toward 
absolute perfection ; preaching on the ancient principles — truly 
evangelical preaching in the ears of the multitude and in the 
bosom of nature — taking his views from the living fountain of 
the moral conscience, and scattering them like refreshing dew 
on all spirits, to incline them to a religious transformation, 
analogous to that produced in the world by the first appear- 
ance of Christianity. 

As some men, who were imbued with Rationalism, contest- 
ed the impossibility of this reconciliation, on account of the 
incompatibility between modern science and the miracles of 
the Middle Ages, between reason and supernatural revela- 
tions, the philosopher replied that such sentiments arose from 
a false conception of miracles and prophecy, from considering 
them as real acts which actually occurred, when they were 
symbols of systems to come, of regenerative periods in the 
successive life of the spirit and of the planet. And what mir- 
acles and prophecies were really intended to explain is the 
arrival of an epoch in which natural revelation and religious 
revelation will mingle as the rapid and almost miraculous in- 



x 86 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



tuition will blend with maturity and profound reflection \ as 
the sensible will be confounded with the intelligible, each one 
of our sensations being a thought ; as, for the perfection of 
our language, ideas are confounded with words, in the same 
manner that Christ by His incarnation in our being mingled 
in His own person the divine with the human nature. 

When a religion is separated from its time and from the 
progress of its time, alas ! it perishes. It is impossible that a 
liberal age should harmonize with an epoch of absolutism in 
religion ; an age in which the living conscience is progressive, 
and a religion drawn from departed traditions; an age of 
right, and a religion of compulsion ; an age which unfolds it- 
self to study all sciences, and a religion which closes itself 
against every thing which is not theological. In such a con- 
dition, in a crisis so fearful and supreme, either the people be- 
come fossilized like the Moors, who never change their fatal- 
ism, or religions decay and disappear, as disappeared the 
Pagan religion, when, on account of its sensual character, it 
could not satisfy the spiritual thirst awakened in the human 
soul by sad misfortunes and consciousness of having been de- 
ceived, and by the sublime truths of immortal philosophy. 

How great would Pius IX. have been if, on feeling that his 
religious supremacy was incompatible with all political au- 
thority, with all political power, he had abdicated that au- 
thority, resigned that power, exchanged the purple of the 
Caesars for the robe of the pulpit ; renewed in the most ex- 
alted purity the faith of his ancestors ; organized evangelically 
the Church of Christ; united the people in religious assem- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 187 

blies ; exposed to the world the power of despots, the pride 
of aristocrats, and the avarice of the wealthy • if he had given 
to the wronged right, and to the slave his liberty, assisted the 
new birth of Italy, the resurrection of Poland, sent mission- 
aries of the Spirit against the new Pagan sensuality, against 
the implacable selfishness of the governing classes, and main- 
tained with profound conviction that Liberty, Equality, and 
Fraternity are not solely evangelical formulas, but also social 
truths capable of creating a new earth, and of extending above 
it new heavens of blessed and perennial radiance ! Then had 
he been able to celebrate the new resurrection of the modern 
spirit; then had he raised his voice as a hymn of triumph; 
then had he seen by faith, at the gates of the churches of the 
Middle Ages, the angel clothed with white and resplendent 
with beauty whom the holy women beheld beside the sepul- 
chre, announcing that Christ was not there, that he had risen 
indeed ! 

" Re stir r exit , non est hie" 

The proof of how much he would have been able to accom- 
plish with these great means is to be found in what he actu- 
ally did with poor means, with timid reforms, with slight and 
very feeble palliatives. An amnesty which demanded the serv- 
ile formula of a previous oath ; a commission nominated ex- 
pressly to study indispensable reforms; a consulting-chamber 
composed of a representative for each province, to appoint 
deputies, and to discuss the election of the Pontiff; a council 
of a hundred members, who were to nominate a senate of 
nine — all these timid announcements of social renovation 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



awakened Italy ; produced liberal codes of laws and reaction- 
ary principles, as those of Modena and of Parma ; opened in 
Sicily the doors of her dungeons ; gave a breath of liberty in- 
stead of the poisonous air of Naples ; obliged strangers to re- 
tire from Ferrara before Pontifical protest ; strengthened the 
arm of Charles Albert for the cause of independence ; brought 
down Guizot in Paris, and Metternich in Vienna ; proclaimed 
the five days of Milan, which were five days of saving martyr- 
dom ; cheered amid the deepest shadows of the lagunes the 
fainting soul of Venice ; transformed with a new belief the 
hearts most closed against all noble sentiments ; infused into 
the Italians their ancient valor ; and in a few days, of the 
hundred thousand Austrians sent to oppress their country, 
four thousand were corpses, twenty-seven thousand wounded 
or useless, the remainder dispersed. Those uncertain words 
of liberty, uttered upon the heights of the Vatican, had pour- 
ed new blood into the veins, new ideas into the conscience 
of heretofore lethargic Europe. The bells, which sounded for 
vespers, rang out also for the downfall of tyranny. 

But in this supreme moment Pius IX. remembered he was 
a Pope, and a Pope after the old fashion. In a war between 
the Austrians and the Italians, although all the right was on 
the part of the one, and all the wrong on the part of the other, 
the Pope felt that both were Catholics. At the same time 
that the King of Naples abandoned the Italian cause, on ac- 
count of sad territorial competitions, for the sake of a booty to 
be gained from the engagement to take arms, Pius IX. froze 
the blood in the veins of his nation by refusing to give the 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



189 



support of his troops or to bless the combatants in the most 
sacred of causes — that of Italy ; and afterward convoked the 
Catholic powers, demanded their assistance, pointed out to 
them the way to Rome ; beheld them, without emotion, de- 
stroy great monuments, immolate pious Catholics; and, amid 
ruined buildings and heaps of corpses, he was carried back to 
rest himself on his earthly throne, propped up by the bayo- 
nets of foreign legions ! 

From the day on which Pius IX. returned from the pro- 
scription of Rome, supported by foreign soldiers, he can not 
be held to have represented the evangelical spirit of the early 
Christians — he rather personifies the theocratic spirit of the 
antique Asiatic Pontiffs. And, nevertheless, those who pro- 
fess the Christian religion w 7 ith faith and sincerity are quite 
ignorant of that which can move the world when allied with 
liberty. In modern history it has happened that the strict- 
est Catholics detest liberty, while those called Liberal Cath- 
olics are apt to fall into heresy ; neither the one nor the other 
having found the means of reconciling the spirit of our age 
with the religion of our fathers ; yet both the Old and the 
New Testament maintain republican traditions. It is known 
that in the organization of the illustrious tribe of Judah, the 
kings represented the incongruity of the Mosaic traditions 
with the ideas and ceremonies of the rest of the people — so 
much so that the prophet represented with austere republi- 
can vigor the pure idea of Israel. I repeat it, modern elo- 
quence of the tribune may draw republican sentiments from 
the Holy Scriptures, as they were taken by the founders of 



190 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

the American democracy, whose renown, like that of all glori- 
ous consolidations, increases with ages. The people of Is- 
rael asked for a king, and God denied their request. Dif- 
ferent warnings directed them to their true King, the God of 
Abraham, declared by the mouth of Samuel. A king will dis- 
honor and oppress ; will make you his soldiers, his grooms, 
and lackeys ; will despise you, and mix his gall in the leaven 
of your bread ; convert the people into beasts of burden, and 
make them forge instruments of war, as well as tools for 
agriculture ; will cultivate without cessation for the royal ad- 
vantage, grow corn-fields in the sweat of their brow, and with 
their blood water the fields of battle. He will take your 
children to divert him — to intoxicate him with their songs 
and flatterings. You will sow and he will reap ; you will plant 
and he will gather ; you will work and he will enjoy ; your 
fields will be granaries for his courtiers, and your vineyards 
degraded by the orgies of his creatures ; your gains will be- 
long to him, and you yourselves under his sceptre will be but 
an assemblage of serfs. 

The emotion that an ebullition of liberal tendency in Pius 
IX. has produced in the world, proves to what point progress- 
ive convictions would make way in the minds of the multi- 
tude if they were disseminated by the Church. But the heart 
saddens when it feels that, if the Pope can raise his voice 
against kings, he could also raise it in the name of princi- 
ples more reactionary than those of monarchs — in the name 
of that theocracy whose tutelage Europe shakes off in propor- 
tion as the outline of civil rights is unfolded and human rea- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. I9I 

son is matured. These monarchies have become odious, for 
they do not correspond to the present state of our culture 
and civilization — to the mysterious essence of the modern 
spirit ; but one of the causes of the continuance of these insti- 
tutions — one of the chief causes — is the tremendous opposi- 
tion they offer to theocracy, to the predominant policy and 
rule of the sacerdotal power over human society. While the 
monarchy created civil principles, the theocracy sheltered it- 
self behind its religious principles, and persisted in holding 
minds in serfdom. For this kings exist : because they strug- 
gle with Popes, because they dissolve bodies like the Tem- 
plars, because they expel Jesuits, because they oppose civil life 
to theocratic life. The voice of the sovereign Pontiff, when 
it fought against the liberty of modern peoples — against the 
independence of Italy — against the secularization of Europe- 
an communities— was but a voice from the tomb, lost in the 
independent spirit of the nineteenth century, whose enlight- 
enment never, never will accommodate itself with theocracy 
— with that spectre of the Middle Ages. 

The man capable of dreaming of a Pontifical restoration— 
of that which is as contrary to kings as to the minds of the 
people — is Cardinal Antonelli, whom I saw for the first time 
on Palm Sunday, 1866, in the Basilica of St. Peter. I asked 
one of the noble guards stationed near me which was the 
Cardinal, and he replied that he would point him out to me 
when he passed. With much kindness, the recollection of 
which is fresh and pleasing, he passed me over to the other 
side, making way for me between the files of soldiers, where 



I9 2 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

the Vicar of Christ was to stop, according to custom. A 
Frenchman near me, with an elegant and intelligent lady, 
shared in my desire to scrutinize the face of the Cardinal 
from that place, where either chance or intention had brought 
them. The Frenchman was very communicative, and made 
a thousand observations about every thing, some graceful, 
some flippant, all exaggerated — expressions carefully moder- 
ated by the lady with much ability. He had one idol in lit- 
erature — Heine; and one hatred in politics — the Cardinal 
Antonelli. 

The day was extremely hot, notwithstanding that it was 
early in April, and my companion, who had just crossed with 
much difficulty the great square of St. Peter, said, wiping his 
heated face with his handkerchief, "How hot it is outside, 
and how cool in the Cathedral ! Heine was right ; when, on 
hot and suffocating days like this, you enter a church, you 
can not do less than exclaim, \ What a beautiful religion for 
summer is the Catholic !' Coming here I met a peasant beat- 
ing a scriptural ass, and he was saying to the poor animal, 
reminding me of Heine, ' Suffer, suffer, because thy parents 
ate forbidden barley in Paradise.' And Rome can not com- 
pare herself with the Paradise described by the great poet, 
where the sunflowers bear pastry, and the birds, ready roast- 
ed, come to you with salt-cellars in their beaks." I affected 
not to hear all this chatter, nor to observe the numerous sleeve- 
pullings of the lady, who vainly endeavored to change the 
conversation, and I said, "Are you personally acquainted with 
Cardinal Antonelli ?" "I do not know him personally, but I 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. I93 

can fancy what he is like. Morally I know him from mem- 
ory — from having read Liverani." 

" I do not know that author." 

" He is a chanoine of Santa Maria Maggiore, a true priest ; 
in his conscience he is a perfectly pious man ; in his life an 
austere anchorite ; in his origin a peasant, converted into a 
preacher. Agriculture is propitious to the prelates and dig- 
nitaries of the Church. Sixtus V. was not only a shepherd, 
he was the son of a gardener. And the Catholic Church oc- 
cupies herself with such puerilities that she has tried to prove 
— as if it were a question of the highest importance — that 
he kept goats instead of pigs, and that the animals under 
his crook were not really his property, but belonged to his 
master." 

" What trouble you give yourself, Henri," said the lady, u to 
calumniate Catholicism in her own Capital, and in her grand 
Basilica I" 

In order to support the observations of the lady, I said, 
"One must see these great monuments with the mind full of 
the emotions awakened by each one of their stones. To see 
the Mosque of Cordova, you must be inspired with the spirit 
of the Middle Ages, and to see the Parthenon of Athens, with 
the spirit of Paganism." 

The Frenchman understood the force of my remark, and 
became slightly irritated. 

" If any thing proves to me with irrefragable demonstration 
the decadence of Catholicism, it is the extreme sensitiveness 
with which it bestows an anti-Catholic character to every ob- 

I 



i 9 4 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



servation more or less just upon the Pope and his court. 
He would have something to do who should seek to prove by 
dogmas the kind of cattle kept by Sixtus V. ! Would the 
flock of goats be more ecclesiastic and orthodox than a 
drove of pigs ?" 

I, agreeing in the justice and even in the grace of this re- 
mark, changed the conversation, and inquired about the book 
of Liverani. 

" It is dedicated to the Comte de Montalembert, who de- 
sires the restoration, that is to say, Milan and Venice under 
the feet of the Croatians; the Quadrilateral put as an Aus- 
trian horse-shoe on the Arms of Italy ; and to see all patriots 
dispersed and wandering through the world." 

"We have not been long in Rome," said the lady; "your 
imprudence will soon oblige us to leave." 

" Do not be afraid \ we can speak in French, and they will 
not understand us. A friend of mine, who lately left the Car- 
dinal Antonelli, told me he speaks French detestably. And 
if Cardinal Antonelli speaks our language so badly, fancy 
how*it is spoken and understood by the common people." 

" Speak in French, then," I said. 

" It is not extraordinary that Cardinal Antonelli expresses 
himself in the idiom of the Revolution, when he speaks equal- 
ly ill in the language of theology. Father Liverani relates 
that in the Matins for the Nativity, in 1859, he heard him sing 
'Er-ritus de potestate tenebrarum? 

putting the accent on the second syllable, when he should 
have sung 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. I9 g 

i Erutus de potestate tenebrarum? 
putting the accent on the first syllable." 

Latin, when spoken by the French, is in our ears an almost 
unintelligible language ; so I could not help laughing at hear- 
ing him criticise a grammatical error in the worst of pro- 
nunciations. 

" What Antonelli understands profoundly is domestic econ- 
omy. Sonnino, his native village, has been made the chief 
business city in the Roman States. It is a plantation of offi- 
cials : Giacomo Antonelli, Secretary of State and Prefect of 
the holy Apostolic Palaces, native of Sonnino \ Count Filip- 
po Antonelli, Chancellor of the Exchequer, native of Sonnino ; 
Count Luigi Antonelli, Conservador of Rome, native of Son- 
nino — you could write a whole litany of Antonellis. As Dio- 
cletian was Caesar, Diocletian Pontiff, Diocletian Tribune, 
Diocletian Consul ; so Antonelli. is Administrator, Antonelli 
Chancellor, Antonelli Diplomatist, Antonelli Soldier, Anto- 
nelli Cardinal, Antonelli enemy of modern civilization, Anto- 
nelli monopolizer of the Holy Ghost, Antonelli Pope of the 
Pope." 

I began to observe that the garrulous talk of the Frenclv 
man was compromising me, and as there was a sudden move- 
ment among the people, I withdrew from the spot, when a 
noise and murmur among the crowd foretold the approach 
of the Holy Father. Cardinal Antonelli came close to me, 
pausing for some minutes just in front, forming part of the 
procession of Cardinals and Bishops which partly precedes 
the Pope and partly surrounds his chair. Antonelli appeared 



196 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

to me to be tall and strong — a huntsman rather than a Car- 
dinal — a mountaineer, but no courtier. Eyes dark as night, a 
prominent nose, full lips, a lemon-colored complexion, a rude 
and rugged physiognomy, a daring character, a robust consti- 
tution ; and his attitudes and gestures— according to my im- 
pressions — proclaimed a man long habituated to command 
imperiously, and to be obeyed without resistance. But I 
should also declare, he seemed to me to be a person of ex- 
treme vulgarity. 

I recalled my historical lectures, remembered the list of 
those illustrious Cardinals, of those Pontifical Ministers, de- 
scribed in the admirable history of the Popes, during the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries, by Ranke — a work which 
deserves great praise from the most devoted Catholics. I 
thought of Gallio di Como, who directed political power with 
so much ability in two consecutive Pontificates; Rusticucci, 
as severe in his life as in his morals ; Santorio, firm in prin- 
ciples, pure in habits, energetic for his friends, inflexible to- 
ward his enemies, superior in his exalted solitude to human 
passions ; Madruzzi, the Cato of the Sacred College ; Sirlet, 
so learned in all sciences, and especially in philological sci- 
ence, who conversed equally with doctors and with children, 
who bought fleeces of wool from the little shepherds on con- 
dition of teaching them the Christian doctrine ; Carlo Borro- 
meo, a saint whose memory will never be effaced from Milan, 
and from the mountains near the Lago Maggiore ; Torres, 
who concluded a league against the Turks, and whose victory 
was called the battle of Lepanto; Bellarmino, the first of con- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. ICj7 

troversialists and of grammarians ; Maffei, the historian of 
the conquest of the Portuguese Indies by Christianity; Felipe 
de Neri, the founder of the order of illustrious orators, who 
seemed called to. restore religion in the European conscience ; 
when the great Sixtus V. — always alive to improvement — fer- 
tilized the Roman hills with flowing waters, making their gar- 
dens bloom with flowers, and erected stately monuments; 
when Fontana raised the obelisk before St. Peter's, termina- 
ting it with the Christian Crucifix ; when Patrizi harmonized 
the Catholic theology with philosophical traditions, and rec- 
onciled Moses with Hermes ; when Torquato Tasso breathed 
the last accents of the Catholic Muse, and Guido and Do- 
menichino showed the exquisite beauty of painting ; and to 
the echo of the sublime music of Palestrina the spiritual wor- 
ship — already nearly extinguished — was rekindled, and re- 
ceived new vitality. 

Griin compared Cardinal Antonelli to the prelates of Bene- 
vento, judged with so much harshness by Montesquieu, and 
who, while Pope Benedict XIII. prayed before the statue of 
St. Vincent Ferrer, ran from monastery to monastery, kissed 
the hands of the friars, performed extreme penance, despising 
all pleasures and all earthly pomps, gave themselves up to 
ambition, to wealth, and the follies of the world. The char- 
acter of the Pope is a radical contradiction — most radical — 
to that of the Cardinal of Sonnino, as the character of Bene- 
dict XIII. was a radical contradiction to that of the Cardinal 
of Benevento. 

Pius IX., whose election was so unexpected, imagined him- 



198 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN, 



self called by God to work miracles and do all sorts of won- 
ders * and from the first day of his Pontificate he was ambi- 
tious of doing good. Extremely sensitive by natural temper- 
ament epileptic by constitution, incapable of violent hatred, 
without strong passions, moral from habit, of a lively fancy, 
gifted with flowing language and a clear and sonorous voice - 
easy and eloquent in his improvisations, quiet in his gestures, 
sweet and benevolent in appearance, mystic even to ecstasy 
in his prayers and praises, majestic on the throne, an artist 
before the altar, a rigid formalist in religious ceremonies, a 
lover of human pomps, devoted to a historic destiny and to 
his exalted ministry — believing in his greatest errors and 
equivocations that God inspired and guided him, and that he 
interpreted His thought and expressed His will on the face 
of the earth. 

He does not enrich his own relations, nor hoard up treas- 
ures, nor measure out charity, nor does he refuse to give an 
audience, no matter how inopportune and troublesome. He 
puts no lock on his ever open heart, never bites his lips, 
which are always slightly apart, and often gives the impres- 
sion that his thoughts are far distant. He has no very pro- 
found knowledge of human nature, understands more of out- 
ward formalities than of secret motives ; of his power, more 
of the pomps than of the prestige ; of his authority, more the 
display than the strength ; and accustomed to live surround- 
ed by those who treat him as a god, he feels pleasure in being 
called every day, "holy, holy, holy," in breathing the smoke 
of such incense. But in this exalted position, when he pn> 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. jgg 

mulgates doctrines of faith, when he assembles CEcumenical 
Councils, when the entire Church declares him superior to 
human errors, when to others his thoughts seem divine as 
those of the Word, and his lips sacred as oracles — at such 
times a passing cloud, the electricity of the air, the rapid and 
frequent changes of the Roman climate, affect his nerves, 
which are extremely susceptible to atmospheric influences; 
his nerves act upon his temper, and force him to bursts of ill- 
humor and impatience which contradict his natural amiabil- 
ity, and prove how this demi-god — this great and supernatural 
being — is subject, like all other mortals, to the sins and in- 
firmities which arise from the imperfection of our nature and 
the laws which govern the whole universe. And under the 
dominion of this Pope, who aspired to evangelize the world, 
to Christianize the democracy, the Pontifical authority has 
been converted to an absolutism which was impossible under 
the empire of the most absolute monarchs. The soul trem- 
bles on considering how our Church has moved inversely to 
our civilization. An institution of the very highest preten- 
sions, a ministry which professes to redeem the human race, 
should be the light and the warmth of souls, as the sun is the 
light and warmth of our bodies. And in order to be the 
light and warmth of our souls, the Church should unfold over 
the head of the man stamped with the seal of divine election 
the ethereal wings of a truly superhuman ideal, spiritualistic 
and celestial. In a mysterious manner the Church conquered 
the Latin world and subdued barbarians. By her tendency 
to act on the imagination, she assembled councils, like the 



2 00 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



Council of Jerusalem, where Jews and Pagans were recon- 
ciled, always heretofore separated in history, and Christianity 
progressed till it became the religion of humanity. By her 
mysterious tendency to the ideal, she formalized that earliest 
Greek theology which diffused the creating breath of the di- 
vine into the human understanding. In the. same way she 
raised slaves to the dignity of religious beings, and impelled 
the Caesars to assist the Nazarenes to elevate man ; to edu- 
cate him in pure idealism ; to make his conscience as a sac- 
rifice consecrated to the Divinity on the altars of the universe, 
was a worthy, a most worthy ministry of a religion which will 
triumph by its radical opposition to Pagan sensuality with 
all its cancerous putrefaction. The Church in the three first 
ages was a democratical federation. The Church from the 
time of Charlemagne has been an empire ; yes, an empire ac- 
cording to the Roman fashion, while Europe has tended to 
federation. The Roman Bishops desired to be more Caesars 
than Popes \ they wished to perpetuate, under the protection 
of the Cross, the subjugation of the world. At the foot of 
the new altars, as at the foot of the ancient shrines, Rome 
only, of her own authority, consented to confine the new bar- 
barians in her Basilicas, as she had confined the old barba- 
rians in her Capitol. For this object she had armies that, 
instead of arms, carried bells to summon to prayer, and in- 
stead of bucklers wore sackcloth — she had the monks. She 
had her jurisconsults — the canons; she had her code of laws 
— the false decrees of the Popes \ she had even the title of 
Caesar left to her by Constantine ; and she had her emperor 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 oi 

— the Pope. But the Popes had not always to boast of this, 
for during some centuries they served democracies. 

The religious movements in Rome can be always explained 
by political interests. Rome is among ancient cities the most 
faithful to the Pagan religion, for she believes that the Pagan 
religion is the most favorable to her power and greatness. 
Rome, in the deluge of the invasion in which her gods were 
overthrown, embraced Catholicism with ardor, not because it 
was the truest religion, but because it was the religion most 
opposed to that of her conquerors, which was Arianism. So 
Rome excited the Italians and the world to rebel against the 
imperial barbarian, supporting herself upon two great and 
capital principles, upon Catholicism and Republicanism. To 
the unity of Lombardy was opposed the Roman democracy. 
The city not only gave up her soul to the Pope, but she hum- 
bly implored the help of Constantinople ; and by means of 
the divine virtue of enlarged intelligence, by means of the 
geographical position of the Peninsula, she unites in the isles 
of the Tyrrhene Sea, in the lagunes of the Adriatic, behind 
the Apennines, in the defiles of the Abruzzas, all the ship- 
wrecks that have preserved the antique ideal and the ancient 
Italian worship. 

It is impossible to comprehend how the Popes have been 
supported by the world, without understanding the political 
situation of Italy in the sixth and seventh centuries. The By- 
zantine unity, that is a shadow in Ravenna; the unity of Lom- 
bardy, that is a sword and sceptre in Pavia; the federal unity, 
that is a religion and a democracy in Rome. The Eternal 

I 2 



202 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

City could not protect herself nor protect the Republic. She 
found herself, after five hundred years of empire and five in- 
vasions of barbarians, among the ruins of her temples and the 
ashes of her power ; she was no longer defended by dictators, 
by consuls, by Caesars, by the ancient magistrates, but by bish- 
ops ; for it is evident that now bishops are the defenders of 
cities, the chiefs of the plebeians, the new tribunes of the de- 
mocracy ; those only who find their own words of faith and 
enthusiasm enough to create armies of plebeians, where are 
formed legions of martyrs to the battle and to death. But 
those who imagine that the power of the Popes in this su- 
preme crisis was solely to be attributed to miracles of faith, 
are much deceived. They are strong, because they have had 
devoted to them the warrior nation — the French people. The 
French are the soldiers of Catholicism. While we struggled 
for Catholicism in its old age and decay, the French did so 
when Catholicism was youthful and vigorous. It is always 
useful to serve a progressive principle. The French increase, 
and we degenerate while supporting the same principle. But 
they helped it when the Church was educating humanity, 
when the Church was a religious body and a republican fed- 
eration, while we assisted it in Europe after we had finished 
our wars with the Moors — we who from the thirteenth century 
represented for the house of Aragon the civil principle op- 
posed to the theocratic principle — we served it in Europe when 
the Church in Germany, in Holland, and in England opposed 
herself to the education of humanity. The patriarchs of Con- 
stantinople aspired to be, through the viceroys of Ravenna, 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 203 

the directors of the crusade against the Lombardians. But 
the bishops of Rome showed the federation of bishops at 
whose head they appeared — the multitude agitated and be- 
wildered by Catholic doctrines and the miraculous lances in 
the hands of the French, whose valor was invincible, ready to 
pass the Alps and the Pyrenees, the Rhine and the Ebro, to 
defend the priests and their new religion. This is the singular 
means by w T hich the Pontificate became the head and centre 
of the world. 

Afterward, in the crisis of society, the movements of the hu- 
man spirit conspired in the first period of the Middle Ages to 
strengthen this precedence. The people of Lombardy were 
converted to Christianity, embraced the religion of the van- 
quished in Italy, a century after the Goths embraced the same 
religion in our Spain. From that moment the Pope, who haa 
no longer any need of the Emperors of Constantinople, turned 
against her, combated her Monotheism, her iconoclasts, her 
viceroys, her embassadors, whom he wished to secure to his 
own interests, refusing her the sanction of all Pontifical au- 
thority over his religious power, and exciting the Catholic 
conscience against the heterodox sentiments of Constantino- 
ple; and the Italian patriotism and the Italian federation 
against the re-appearance of the ancient empire, in a rival city, 
an enemy of "Eternal" Rome. But while he separated from 
Constantinople and acquired moral independence, he wished 
to overcome Pavia and to attain material independence also. 
It was of no avail that the people of Lombardy had been con- 
verted to Catholicism ; they had not been changed into re- 



204 THE G0D 0F THE VATICAN. 

publicans, and the Pope was at the same time the High-Priest 
of the Catholics and the Chief of the federation. During this 
age — the eighth century — the Italian people abhorred mon- 
archy, and even preferred theocracy. All the sea-port towns 
demanded of the Pope that he would liberate them civilly from 
the tutelage of a king as he had liberated them morally and 
religiously from the authority of the Emperor. The Pope could 
not attain so great an object unassisted, but was able to do so 
by counting on his faithful and select people. The French 
San Leon would not have felt the anger of Attila if the 
French had not previously disarmed the great exterminator in 
the Catalonian fields. To overcome the Lombardians, it was 
necessary to repeat the same story, to act over again the same 
programme — the French were to wound and slay, the Pope to 
bury the dead. 

In vain the best Italian patriots cursed that period in the 
history of their country, in which fell the civil and monarch- 
ical unity, to be replaced by the theocratic unity of the world. 
Perhaps when the kingdom of Lombardy conquered, the Ital- 
ian people became more warlike, nationality more united and 
powerful ; but it could not be the nation of theocracy, which 
nourished and educated Europe for so many centuries; it 
could not be the first nation in modern culture ; it could not 
be the country of so many free and independent municipalities 
and of so many republican towns ; it could not be that uni- 
versal school of music, of painting, of sculpture, in which the 
mind has been developed and cured in adversity, consoled in 
sorrow, keeping always before it a bright and living picture, 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



205 



and like the aroma of flowers, like the warble of the birds, like 
the rustling of the groves, like the incense of the fields, dif- 
fused through the celestial immensity, giving to Christian Eu- 
rope the illustrious name and the enviable ministry exercised 
by immortal Greece in ancient Europe. 

In the year 800 Europe rose against the first idea of the 
Pontificate after the treaty with Charlemagne. The Pope de- 
livered over to the French the old kingdom of Lombardy, 
and the French made over to the Pope the new patrimony 
of St. Peter. Exalted on this feudal soil, the Pope, after hav- 
ing disposed of his enemies — after having separated his city 
from Constantinople, from Pavia, from Ravenna, which all 
eclipsed Rome — gave himself up to all his spiritual ambition, 
to all his supposed sovereignty over souls ; to be a creature 
apart, almost a God ; to dictate moral laws superior to all 
written laws ; to extend an authority over a dominion that 
knows no limits, over the dominion of the human conscience ; 
to place his own moral codes higher than all others ; to set 
his Church on a more lofty pinnacle than all societies, his 
voice where the ancient oracles had never dared, his person 
above the gods of antiquity; to destroy the lineage of the 
priesthood conceded -to whoever demanded it — to make celi- 
bacy impossible for them by making it into a hereditary 
dignity ; to oppose moral force to so much material power, 
religious unity to the numerous divisions of feudalism, the 
democracy educated in monasteries and universities to the 
military aristocracy that dwelt in fortified castles \ to trans- 
form the world, the earth, as reality is always transformed by 



2o6 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

an anterior and superior transfiguration of sentiments. It im- 
ported little, very little, that the Popes now fell into the mire 
of vice — that they became demented from pride and power, 
and passed, under the tutelage of their courtiers, to the great- 
est depravity ; their power did not lie in their characters or 
habits, but in the belief of the people ; and they ruled the 
world by the magic of their doctrine ; by the sorcery of their 
relics ; by their miracles and legends ; by their numerous pil- 
grimages i by the power of their bishops, almost omnipotent 
in feudal territories ; by the commentaries of their juriscon- 
sults, who invented numerous laws and falsified many old 
writings ; by the necessity, above all, that the world has in its 
childhood, the spirit in its innocence, of a theology which is 
at once its nurse and its mistress — which attracts it with fa- 
bles, like that of the near destruction of the world in the year 
iooo, and holds it by these legends subject and submissive. 
The chief work of the Middle Ages will remain : the treaty 
of Charlemagne, a Pope sanctioned by the Emperor in the 
centre of Italy, an Emperor crowned by the Pope in the cen- 
tre of Germany, and crowds of feudal bishops around the two 
great stars of the Middle Ages — around the Popedom and 
the Empire. 

The bishops, possessed of so much influence, enjoy a su- 
premacy which Popes and Emperors wish to keep under their 
respective domination. Hence there is a struggle between 
the Italian element and the German element within the 
Church ; hence the celebrated litigation of the Investitures. 
The German Emperors succeeded in having German Popes 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



207 



in Rome ; and the German Popes were almost all sacrificed in 
Rome. At last the Caesar of the Pontiffs mounted the throne 
— Gregory the Seventh. He anxiously- desired the free elec- 
tion of the Popes, the independence of the bishops ; to be 
able to unite and administer all ecclesiastical properties ; to 
make of the Church a society superior to the world, and sepa- 
rate from it ; to get back by all means the Holy Sepulchre, 
in a war whose symbol should be the Cross, with an army 
whose general should be the Pope ; and, to emancipate him- 
self completely from the Germanic Empire, he invented the 
fable that the patrimony of St. Peter was the gift of Constan- 
tine, and obliged the Emperors, clothed with sackcloth and 
camel's-hair, to hear tremblingly on their knees a word from 
those Pontifical lips that could raise or subdue nations — a 
.benediction from those hands which could appease or irritate 
the powers of Heaven. 

If the Popes had been suppressed, Europe would not have 
been educated by the civilization of the Middle Ages. If the 
human intellect had completely submitted to the Pope, Eu- 
rope would have been to-day a stagnant empire, Asiatic in its 
character — an ecclesiastical empire, having its Grand Lama 
in the Eternal City. , Fortunately the principle of contradic- 
tion sprang up to obviate the sad and imperfect absorption 
of all human nature by one of its elements. Great opposi- 
tion arose against the Pope, reminding him of his dependence 
upon the civil power, and of the recent accession of author- 
ity, for which he was solely indebted to the Western Emper- 
ors. Neither the war nor the peace of Investitures cleared 



208 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

up the numerous difficulties. Notwithstanding the humilia- 
tions of Henry IV. and the schemes of Pascal II., nature de- 
sired the prolongation of this struggle, and the continuance 
of this uncertainty, that neither of the two principles striving 
for the mastery should be able to predominate and overthrow 
the other. Thus the Church preserved her moral character 
and her theological reputation, while the idealistic element 
entered the soul ; and the Empire preserved its civil and po- 
litical character, forbidding the theocratic authority to enslave 
the whole of our being. By this struggle the Western World 
constituted unity in variety ; tranquillity in the midst of war ; 
equilibrium between opposing and contrary forces. All the 
harmony of the Middle Ages arose from this enmity between 
the Popedom and the Empire. Without the one Europe 
would have become a military camp ; without the other Eu- 
rope would have been turned into a monastery. Thus mut- 
ual opposition completely saved the culture of humanity. 

Such was the spirit that overflowed in Europe ; and the 
East arose to receive with eagerness the advance of human 
thought, and the monks preached, and the towns were moved, 
feeling a new life awakened in their bosom ; crosses were 
erected on the wayside, and the multitude neither knew from 
whence they came nor whither they went, but were aware 
that some mystery enveloped and sustained them, and be- 
lieved that every town was Jerusalem, that each monument 
was a sepulchre, that each wild rose was the desert, till a 
great part of the ancient ignorance disappeared, and a great 
part of the modern equality came from the common struggle 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 20Q 

and the common troubles, revealing the identity and the unity 
of nature in each man and in all human beings, which be- 
gins by being the slave of the theocracy and of feudalism, 
and goes on seeing freedom and determined to attain it ; 
which goes from Europe blindly believing, and returns, as it 
were, from the desert, with the doubt of Job upon the soul, 
disposed to enter into another phase of civilization, more hu- 
man and progressive. The Pope imagined that he could pre- 
serve the faith by upsetting and agitating Europe ; this very 
commotion awakened Europe to reason. 

Commerce is a new force of civilization and culture. Like 
all social power, it engenders political organisms. Labor and 
commerce are united. Commerce and labor are the com- 
mencement of the emancipation of those who pay taxes. 
From thence arose the tribunals of commerce in Italy, the 
municipalities in Spain, the communes in France. The Pope 
understands that this invoking of nature will make the ficti- 
tious part of the Catholic religion disappear • and that these 
invasions of the democracy will destroy theocratic aristocracy. 
As the universe, which may be turned into a fountain of life 
from having been a fountain of evil, labor turns from its orig- 
inal curse to be the means of continuing the creation ; com- 
merce is ended with the isolation of each man, of each peo- 
ple, which engenders penance and superstition ; yet it com- 
municates with Catholics and infidels; sackcloth, camel's-hair, 
and serge are bartered for gauzes, for brocades, for glisten- 
ing silks. This appearance of nature in the midst of all the 
pretensions in the world, takes possession of religious terror, 



2io THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

appears to the Church like the work of Antichrist, and darts 
its lightnings against the transfigurations of the life and con- 
science. 

But Abelard thought. And thought, when put into words, 
becomes history. And history makes men. And the man 
who represented Abelard was Arnoldo de Brescia, a monk 
and a soldier, a tribune and an ascetic, a philosopher and a 
mystic, a most eloquent preacher and a consummate politi- 
cian, a bright apparition of the democracy before theocratic 
altars, capable of suspending for a moment the political au- 
thority of the Popes of Rome, and of demonstrating that ex- 
communication is powerless against reason, which emanci- 
pates ; against heresy, which takes its convictions from nat- 
ure ; against labor, which elevates ; against commerce, which 
binds the people together, and isolates the Church. The 
Pope may triumph for a time, but the seed sown by Arnoldo 
remains in the soil of Europe. The time will come when it 
will spring up. 

The wound in the heart of the Church is open. She has 
lost the prestige of the Crusaders; two Christian armies strug- 
gle for supremacy, while the cimeter again takes possession 
of the Holy Sepulchre and the True Cross; pilgrims set forth 
for Jerusalem, and wait by the way to lay waste and pillage 
Christian cities, like Palermo and Constantinople ; Frederick 
II. wished to renew the exploits of King Godfrey in the Holy 
Land — far from receiving the benediction, he drew upon him- 
self the Papal anathema ; heresy reigns in the territories 
where modern culture prevails, Languedoc and Provence, and 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 n 

kindles a civil war ; the kings of Aragon, who previously sub- 
mitted to the Church, quarrel about the Albigenses ; an un- 
bridled democracy, half composed of demagogues and beg- 
gars, the professed enemies of order and of all property, enter 
with the Franciscans into the Church, which, surrounded with 
troubles in that insurrection of the kings against her power, in 
those continued outbreaks of heresy, calls on the Inquisition, 
and kindles the flame to scatter terror with the Franciscans 
on kings and aristocrats, and with the Dominicans on here- 
tics and on the people. 

How did the Pope issue from all these upheavings of the 
human spirit? He was the head of Christianity, and the chief 
of a party — the Guelphs. He was also a legislator, and wished 
to see ecclesiastical legislation united to Roman and imperial 
legislation. He was the master of religious houses, and shared 
the supreme power with kings. The universities called upon 
Popes and royal personages to educate a class, that of juris- 
consults. These would have removed the diadem of divine 
right from the head of the Pope to that of a king. The 
Church will, to a certain extent, accommodate herself with 
colleges ; but in the college there will be more of Aristotle, 
more of Averroes, more of the Greek philosophers and of the 
Moorish commentators, than of the Fathers and early Chris- 
tian writers. 

At the end of the thirteenth century the real decay of the 
Pontificate began. And this decline did not consist, as super- 
ficial writers have supposed, in the character and reputation 
of the Popes, but in the change of ideas and opinions. In- 



212 THE GOD OF THE VATIC AX. 

nocent III., who represented the greatest power of the Church, 
is the first of the Popes of the decadence, as Marcus Aure- 
lius is before Commodus a great character, who sustains and 
elevates by his own force a very powerful institution wounded 
to the death. Neither valor nor intelligence nor virtue are 
sufficient to fortify institutions which have become enfeebled, 
to save institutions which are expiring. Could Probus sus- 
tain imperial Rome by his virtues, when she was already in 
her last agony? Few men will have in history so great a 
name for daring and force of character as that earned by 
Boniface VIII. He was not exceeded in valor by St. Leo, 
nor in activity by St. Gregory; in deeds of daring he surpassed 
Hildebrand, and in coolness Innocent III. He blockaded 
the feudal and Ghibeline family of the Colonna in Rome, 
which had opposed the Popedom for many centuries, and al- 
ways been allied with its enemies; he pursued it with fire and 
sword through the fields and on the mountains ; shut it up in 
Palestrina, and there executed a most cruel chastisement, 
without leaving one stone upon another in the city that guard- , 
ed the most precious records of the antique, and of the. most 
beautiful works of art of modern genius; a town whose de- 
struction will be eternally deplored by both Latin and Chris- 
tian muses. But Boniface VIII. was never deterred from any 
project or design from any respect for humanity. Recovering 
Poland and Hungary, he ruled over Italy without heeding 
either the Empire or the Emperor; made public rejoicings 
which enriched the Eternal City* with hundreds of pilgrims; 
excommunicated and deposed civil magistrates, as if the 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 l$ 

Caesars had been born anew under the tiara; he defied France, 
and conspired against Germany. But his enemies, collected 
together in armed bands, came to search for him, ravaged his 
capital, attacked his palace, slaughtered his followers, drew 
near to him whom they found awaiting them on his throne, 
with the serenity and steadfastness of a god confident in his 
own omnipotence, the triple crown on his head, the Papal 
mantle on his shoulders, the crosier in his hand • one of the 
invaders struct him a violent blow on the cheek with the iron 
glove of feudalism, after which affront it only remained to 
the Pope to fly, to conceal himself, to deliver himself up to 
another lordly family, the Orsini • and between epileptic fits 
and angry maledictions, to die a miserable death, in the fran- 
tic sorrow caused by his rage and helplessness. The life and 
death of Boniface VIII. confirm the true pithy saying of the 
Roman people: "One arrives at the tiara like a fox, governs 
like a lion, and. dies like a dog." 

But his Pontificate will always mark the decay of the the- 
ocracy, till then ruler of Europe. Then the Papal party was 
divided : the Guelphs into white and black ; the theologians 
into the disciples of Scotus, nominalists, and loyalists ; the 
Popes themselves into Popes of Avignon and Popes of Rome; 
the Catholic nations into schismatics ; scientific bodies into 
sects and heresies; councils into revolutionary assemblies; 
the poets into satirists, who disturbed the peace of the soul 
with their doubts, and persecuted the faith with their subtle 
irony, obliging the human mind to seek elsewhere than in Ro- 
man Catholicism its indispensable aliment. The Order of the 



2I4 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

Templars, which rose in the happy times of the Pontificate, 
which struggled unceasingly for the Church in the East — sov- 
ereign of Cyprus, defender of Jerusalem — submissive to the 
Popes, is dissolved by the great slave of Avignon, by the 
French Pope ; who submitted to the Kings of France and had 
their property confiscated, and their fortresses ruined and oc- 
cupied by royal troops, and their knights burned by slow fires 
in their fields and cloisters, all bearing witness to the glory 
and power of that illustrious army. Even the # great inspired 
theological poem, living temple of the Catholic spirit, conse- 
crated not to passing battles of heroes, but to the journey of 
souls to eternity, to the unfathomable kingdom of the dead, 
touched them not. In the last circles of inextinguishable fire 
and of perpetual punishment, in the depths of hell, almost in 
the mouth of Satan, stand the Popes as the enemies of the 
greatness and of the independence of Italy. 

What spectacles ! The son of the poor laundress and ob- 
scure tavern-keeper, Rienzi, interpreter of Roman inscriptions, 
bringing to memory with true eloquence ancient recollections, 
saw himself proclaimed and honored by the people, who con- 
vey to him the homage of patricians, of cardinals, of kings, of 
emperors, of Popes, and personating for some days the genius 
of the Eternal City, till his head, giddy from such exaltation, 
falls rolling from the heights of the Capitol to the shop of a 
butcher below. And the world saw masqueraders of tribunes 
fill the Pontifical palaces ; and bloody schisms and strifes 
rending the nations ; so that men of genius, like Petrarch, 
turned with sorrow to the antique Paganism, asking again its 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



215 



courage and inspiration ; so that there was a Pope in France, 
another in Italy, another in Aragon, in the sad Peninsula ; so 
that the Emperor Sigismund took upon himself the ecclesi- 
astical power to convocate the universal Church; and the 
chieftainship of the Catholic world passed from a simoniacal 
Pope to a pirate, from a pirate to a madman, from a madman 
to an epicurean, who succeeded in the decay of the empires ; 
that the councils alone were able to kindle souls, to subvert 
the people, to unchain wars ; that the flames consumed men 
of rare faith and genius like John Huss and Jerome of Prague ; 
that the body of Wickliffe was disinterred and thrown into a 
river because he had desired the purification of Christianity; 
that the soldiers of the democracy, preceded by a blind gen- 
eral, called together by the beating of tambourines made of 
human skins, destroyed all before them with fire and sword, 
receiving the Holy Sacrament with the priests in the two ele- 
ments of bread and wine ; that the reconciliation of the Latin 
and Greek Churches — the work of one moment — was broken 
in another moment ; that kings put themselves over the bish- 
ops, and the Church declared herself superior to the Pope ;. 
that the devil fled before knowledge, and nature recovered 
her rights, antiquity its prestige, and conscience its voice, 
while the world lost its ancient faith, and the sovereign Popes 
their domination over Catholic humanity. 

In fine, this movement of the human mind arrived at length 
at the true conception of reform. Thus Christianity has not 
been a sudden and miraculous apparition, the work of a mo- 
ment, a singular inspiration, but the result of all the ages. 



2i6 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

In like manner the Reformation was not brought about by 
the impulsive courage of one friar, the cry of a rebel risen in 
spiritual arms against the Church, the intuition of one soul 
alone, moved partly by its own passions, and partly by the 
historic hatred of its race ; but by the precise corollary of the 
doubts sown by the poets, of the ideas scattered by philoso- 
phers, of the politics imposed by kings, of the pretensions 
emanating from councils, of all the impulses that have been 
given to the human spirit by the action of society and the in- 
controvertible progress of things, to which each step of our 
history testifies. 

Every man himself aspires to be a priest ; every generation 
wishes to interpret the doctrines of faith which affect it the 
most, and succeeds in transforming the dogma previously 
held to be definitive and unchangeable ; revelation seems to 
enlighten all minds, to be the patrimony of all humanity ; the 
book falls from the hands of the people ; the sacerdotal lin- 
eage disappears, and democracy invades the sanctuary; the 
monastic orders, dedicated to maceration, the worship of holy 
relics, the exorcism of demons and indulgences, give way to 
the severe doctrine that extinguishes purgatory, exalts hell, 
and attributes the salvation of man to the divine mercy. 
From this time the predominance of the Pontificate in Eu- 
rope has really disappeared — that influence which contribu- 
ted so largely to our culture and education. It is true that 
Protestantism will be repugnant to the nature of our race and 
to the character of our history ; that if the Pope loses his 
hold on Europe, all America will arise to spread his name 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2I y 

and to receive his baptism — America, which was discovered 
and conquered by heroes who were always Catholics, and 
who finished in Spain its war against the Moors, and then 
undertook on the opposite shore of the Atlantic a crusade 
against the Indians, going and returning in her ships, trav- 
ersing immense countries, and then offering a continent as a 
holocaust before the altars of the Church. 

It is evident that the Church works her greatest miracles 
arid performs her most astonishing actions when she sees 
herself surrounded by snares and perils. No one can tire of 
admiring her action during the sixteenth century. In the 
person of Giulio II., the warrior and conquering Popes of the 
Middle Ages were restored — those who were disposed to 
make souls submit to their words as well as to make fortress- 
es yield to their swords. During the Pontificate of Leo X. 
the spirit of antiquity was awakened; history repeated itself; 
Christian doctrines were diffused ; the beautiful mystery of 
the plastic art was discovered in ancient monuments ; statues 
were brought to light whose lips seem to tremble with the 
classic hymn of Greece. The soul of Plato arose over the 
sensuality of Aristotle ; the glowing language of the ancient 
rostrum was revived; bronzes and marbles became animated, 
and the heavens of art were opened ; the Titans of Michael 
Angelo and the Virgins came to captivate and to beautify 
our planet ; life and pleasure returned to exhausted and mac- 
erated nature ; the Renaissance was founded, and competed 
with the most glorious ages of humanity, and inspired troops 
of artists, who, laying aside petty jealousies, became united 

K 



2 i8 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

by the magic of genius, which flung a golden halo of illusions 
over the universe, softening the corroding cares and sorrows 
of existence. 

Catholic was the marvelous magician who returned to de- 
pict beings fantastic and beautiful as in'the days of the gods, 
creatures natural and spiritual, animated by the sublime in- 
spirations of a poem ; Catholic was the profound thinker who 
discovered the laws of the revolutions and reactions, who 
showed the deep abyss of crimes and hatreds caused by the 
repression of the human intellect; Catholic was the sweet 
Spanish poet who gave his voice to the groves, his melody to 
the streams and breezes, his incense to the flowers, his living 
eclogues to the fields ; Catholic was the young painter, 
unique in the annals of history, who was able to evoke the 
beauty of ancient Greece, and, instead of scenes of cruel flag- 
ellation and penance, to transform in his pictures and embel- 
lish the human organism ; Catholic was the architect, the 
sculptor, the miraculous designer who crowned with the dome 
of St. Peter the temples of the Renaissance; Catholic was the 
immortal music in which the lament of Jeremiah and the 
plaintive accents of David seemed to issue from the abyss of 
past ages ; Catholic was every thing beautiful and artistic 
produced by the sixteenth century. 

And the strength of Catholicism was so great that it 
brought about a real reaction in the seventeenth century. 
The Jesuits disciplined themselves as an army, and under- 
took to bring souls to the Pontificate ; Catholic soldiers inun- 
dated the whole of Germany, demanding — as says a great 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 \() 

writer — the lands of the living for the dead ; William of Or- 
ange falls wounded by the hand of a fanatical Catholic for 
the crime of having founded the republic of Holland ; Carlo 
Borromeo establishes a pious league in the Cantons of Cath- 
olic Switzerland against Protestant Switzerland; Charles and 
James Stuart think they have succeeded in banishing Prot- 
estantism from England; the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes occasions in France a series of reactions against the 
humanitarian Treaty of Westphalia ; in the Spanish Empire 
the pencils of Velasquez fall from his hand, and the fantastic 
dreams of Calderon are buried in an abyss more profound 
and obscure than the tombs of the Escorial, falling into the 
enchantments of Charles II. Rome puts herself at the head 
of all European cities with her religious doctrines, with her 
epopees like those of Tasso, which celebrate a sepulchre, and 
a sepulchre in the hands of the infidels ; and any one would 
say that the world is changing, that the spirit returns to the 
temples and to the altars of the Middle Ages. But none of 
these reactions could restore the Pontificate. Behind them 
came the spiritual philosophy of the eighteenth century, 
which denied even the great excellences of Christianity, and 
was irritated at the mention of the truth of its past history. 
And the spirit of this age produced the cyclopaedia which 
brought philosophic ideas to the level of the common-sense 
of the people. And these philosophic ideas not only de- 
scended to the intelligence of the common people, but they 
rose even to the thrones of monarchs. 

The Jesuits, who had been, like the Templars, soldiers of 



220 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

the Church, the permanent army of Catholicism, were dis- 
solved by the Popes of Rome and by the sovereigns of Eu- 
rope. The new philosophy took strong hold in Austria, which 
had been like the axis of the whole European reaction ; and 
in Spain, which had supported Roman Catholicism in its most 
important crises, and had given it a New World in compen- 
sation for the Old World. What more could be done ? The 
philosophic theories ascended even to the throne of St. Peter, 
spreading itself there like new sap on an old trunk. Phil- 
osophic speculation took possession of consciences, con- 
sciences engendered new institutions, new institution/ changed 
the face of society ; the right, which had previously been per- 
petuated in isolated families, in privileged orders, spread it- 
self among all men ; democracies replaced the aristocracies, 
the revolution replaced immovability ; and the Popes, who 
had vainly on their knees supplicated the Emperors of Ger- 
many, dreading a royal revolution, fled from Rome, and made 
a compact with the French Revolution by anointing the head 
of the soldier of fortune who was elected as sovereign. 

The Pontificate then represented itself in the world as one 
of those institutions, heretofore great, become disorganized by 
the active efforts of society. And when one of these organ- 
isms is upset and disordered, no new social element — not 
any — can recompose it. Even the power which engendered 
it has been destroyed. The spirit which produced it has been 
devoured. The world loses its faith and confidence in it 
by one of those intimate convictions which neither struggle 
nor contrast, but which come from the continued efforts of 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 2l 

thought and reflection. During four centuries after the death 
of Marcus Aurelius the human mind employed itself in up- 
setting the ancient world. Who reconstructed it ? When the 
barbarians came they only met the great corpse. The souls 
had fled to another institution. And the hereditary institu- 
tion of the ancient spirit is, in the modern world, the Pontifi- 
cate. To the Pontificate is due the first force of cohesion 
employed in reuniting modern societies, the highest authori- 
ty, and all our most ancient discipline. But from the thir- 
teenth century the Pontificate has been falling into gradual 
and irremediable decadence, which has brought it to its pres- 
ent extremity. Now the Treaty of Charlemagne is broken. 
The grant of Pepin has disappeared. The dogma of the Pa- 
pal Infallibility has augmented the number of the enemies 
of Rome. Internal struggles distract the Church, which do 
not result in schisms because of the want of sufficient force 
and ability to sustain them. And Europe learns in this great 
disorganization in what manner and for what reasons the 
most rooted institutions expire, even when they are also the 
most powerful ; when they have accomplished the ministry for 
which they were created by society, which exists by contin- 
ually producing and devouring organisms. 

But Pius IX. believed himself the one chosen to restore 
the Pontificate ! What then ? — did it not receive new life and 
new blood from many Popes ? Did not Giulio II. restore it 
up to a certain point by his power ? Leo X. by his artifices ? 
Sixtus V. by his traditions and discipline ? And can not he re- 
vive it also ? — he, elected to his exalted position by a mira- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



cle? But what path to choose? Two are equally open to 
his thoughts and his perception. Take which he will, both 
are strewn with dangers. The one leads to the idea preached 
by Rosmini — the re-animation of the ancient spirit in the 
Church; to the result foreseen by Gioberti — of the intellect- 
ual and moral supremacy of Italy over all other nations by 
means of the Pontificate. The other road was that of Jesuit- 
ism. The Pope believed, and with reason, that the first way 
had been closed against him after his misfortunes of 1848. 
The Pope thought there only remained to him the path of 
radical opposition to all modern institutions, and immediate 
re-establishment of ancient ideas. With this impression, he 
began by exalting into a doctrine of faith in our time that 
which our time has rejected and destroyed. For this he con- 
tinued proclaiming a dogma of faith without assistance from 
the Council. For this he flung into the midst of the afflicted 
Church the dogma of his own infallibility — that is to say, the 
germ of quasi-divinity for himself and of eternal slavery for 
believers. Thus to deny God, to ignore His law, to deaden 
the voice of the conscience He has given, to disrespect public 
morals, to acknowledge no more the Creator of the universe, 
is an error as great, but not greater, than to deny the Pope, 
to ignore his infallibility, to be deaf to the voice of his eccle- 
siastical oracles, even in those points which do not touch the 
faith. These apotheoses, these deifications to which the an- 
cient Pagans raised their vain-glorious Caesars, accord pre- 
cisely with the blasphemies of a celebrated Roman Catholic 
writer who maintains the following thesis: "There are three 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 223 

adorable beings for the true believer — God in the Heavens, 
Christ in the Host, and the Pope in the Vatican." To such 
extremes extend the dogma of Infallibility ! 

We are never tired of repeating that the dogmas promul- 
gated in our time, and the spirit which has presided over 
them, converts Catholicism into a religion of sects ; conse- 
quently the Pope is the chief of sectarians. That ancient hu- 
man feeling which assimilated itself to philosophy and his- 
tory is altogether lost. Before our philosophy, before our 
revolution, he has only scorned or receded or cursed. And 
this right of property is claimed in ideas which are almost 
extinct, of systems in decay, shutting himself up from all the 
emancipations of modern improvements, from all the progress 
of society — ideas and progress which in better times they 
nourished and strengthened. Catholicism assimilated itself 
to Pagan philosophers like Aristotle, and to Mussulman phi- 
losophers like Averroes. That power of assimilation support- 
ed its progress. And the Mohammedan religion, which was 
not able so to conform itself — which translated Aristotle and 
produced Averroes, without the ability to combine them with 
their fatalistic and monotheistic dogmas — by degrees ceased 
to be the creed of one single human family, the religion of 
one race, the soul of imperious soldiers dead as quickly as 
engendered. God will not protect those religions or those 
doctrines capable of losing in their maturity the reason and 
signification they had in their youth. Each new movement 
of time will believe itself divine ; each revelation of the con- 
science will believe itself supernatural. And not being able 



224 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



to lift itself to comprehend nature and spirit combined, it will 
lose with the knowledge of life the reason of former ages. 
Each sect incloses itself within its own party, and does more 
than ignore the history of its opponents — it does more, for 
it calumniates them, dishonors them, curses them, thinking 
it realizes an eternal good. Imagine what would be the his- 
tory of Christianity related by a Jew ! Imagine the history 
of modern Judaism told by a ferocious inquisitor ! The Ro- 
man Catholic scarcely comprehends the faith and doctrines 
of Protestant peoples. The Protestant calls the Pope Anti- 
christ. Read a Greek orthodox work, and it will demonstrate 
to you that these Byzantine notions, which we hold to be 
the extreme of moral decadence, would have saved the world 
by their metaphysics, if the world had not fallen into the pow- 
er of the Jesuits and the Roman Canonists. How blind is 
the sectarian spirit ! We remain in ecstasy before the Venus 
of Milo. Her beautiful severity, her majestic chastity, the 
purity and harmony of her features, the grace and serenity of 
her brow, the complete possession of herself indicated by that 
spirit looking through her immovable eyes, and ruling her 
thoughts and passions, the calmness of that perfect type — 
beautiful ideal of the plastic art — transports and absorbs us 
in mysterious adoration. But to a Christian of the early 
times, fanatical in his new-born belief, that loveliness seemed 
hideous, and in her he beheld indistinctly the wicked and de- 
formed effigy of the Devil. Nothing in the world illuminates 
like the sun, nothing vivifies like the air, nothing is perfumed 
like flowers, nothing refreshes like fruit — charms like the 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



225 



murmur and the aroma of the fields, nothing absorbs like the 
waves of the sea ; and, notwithstanding, mysticism has even 
been able to engender in man an indifference, a hatred for 
the universe. 

Is it surprising if each individual, shut up in his egotism, 
each sect in its tradition, each tradition in its dogma, each 
dogma in its Church, each Church in its intolerance, and each 
kind of intolerance in its cruelty, never arrives at the compre- 
hension of the overflow of the human spirit in all human 
works, various, multiform, contradictory at times, without ever 
losing its fundamental unity ? And those who look upon life 
from one side, upon time from one age, upon science from one 
system, upon art from a single school, the doctrines of one 
religion, society from one party, history from one phase, hu- 
manity from one people, will never understand the human 
mind ; which, as it can not separate itself here, in this planet, 
from its first organism, the body, with which it is combined, 
no more can separate itself from the hearth nor the temple, 
nor art nor science nor society, which are parts of its life, 
organisms of its being, intimate and perpetual revelations of 
its essence, degrees in its progress, but in whose total we virt- 
ually exist, and in whose unfolding is the expansion of our 
own life. We have been with those who were, we shall be in 
those who are to come. Do not let us believe then in one 
sole Church as depositary of the whole absolute truth, nor in 
one people as alone representing the spirit of humanity ! 

I argue against Catholic sects and parties because they 
only understand one part of life, our historical life. They 

K 2 



22 6 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

consider only what we have been, they do not think of what 
we are, nor upon what we shall be. When philosophy re- 
veals every day a secret of this human organism — abstract of 
the universe \ when chemistry has divined the powers of the 
decomposition and the recomposition of nature ; when as- 
tronomy puts us into direct communication with the Infinite; 
when wonderful discoveries have delivered to us the lightning, 
which we make to vibrate in our hands as in those of the an- 
cient gods ; when the earth upon which we live has counted its 
age to us by means of its geological revolutions, and the heav- 
ens which surround us have revealed by the solar spectrum the 
fundamental unity of Cosmos — in this growth of human nat- 
ure and of the human mind, joined to the growing conviction 
of the fundamental equality of all men, and joined with a sci- 
ence which declares* the fundamental equality of all beings in 
Cosmos, do you think a religion can satisfy us whose two 
last dogmas, instead of spiritualizing the life, of idealizing the 
faith, teach us to believe in the exceptional privilege of two 
human creatures \ a privilege and exception incomprehensi- 
ble by the intelligence, and opposed to the universality of 
nature ? 

So society, science, and life go by one road ; and Catholi- 
cism goes by another which is totally different. The Pontif- 
ical Court only feeds itself upon tradition. The Catholic sci- 
ence is Archaeology. In Rome, in Pontifical Rome, the wail 
of an elegy is heard around. The nettle and the buttercup 
bloom upon the material ruins, and over the weeds spring the 
moral ruins. Good Friday is like the last day in this singular 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 22 y 

city, the day in which the heart is desolate, the sanctuary de- 
serted, the lamps extinguished, the altars stripped and veiled, 
and the lament of Jeremiah sounds mournfully in those tem- 
ples of tears and sorrow. I remember on that day, after hav- 
ing been in the Sistine Chapel in the morning, I was on the 
Via Appia, the road of ancient monuments, in the evening. 
I stopped a moment to contemplate the entrance to the Cata- 
combs, and to gather blessed inspirations from their ashes. 
It seemed to me that the souls of the martyrs were reborn at 
my conjuration, and accompanied me through that path of 
sadness and desolation. Sometimes I involuntarily turned 
my eyes to the city, where I saw outlined the formidable 
ruins of Pagan times and the aerial domes of the Catholics. 
Rome behind, the Sabine Chain in front, the desert around, 
aqueducts in all directions, broken and interrupted, the road 
of past ages beneath my feet, the heaven of continued pray- 
ers above my head, four leagues of sepulchres open to my re- 
flection, the monk or the shepherd interrupting the journey 
with their picturesque presence or their religious salutation — 
make one feel one is really descending the region of shadows, 
the abyss of history, and one looks for the guide of Dante to 
accompany the journey. To the right are the Catacombs of 
St. Sebastian, w T here the martyrs repose ; and at the left is the 
Circus Maximus, where the martyrs were immolated. A few 
steps in advance is the tomb of Cecilia Metella, which re- 
cords the last days of the Republic ; a grand mausoleum, be- 
ing a kind of fortification, on which another age has raised a 
new fortification, as new laws have been formed over the laws 



228 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

of that time, and new institutions over those of past ages. 
The stones forming this monument, embrowned by the ardent 
sun of the Campagna, have resisted the storms of centuries 
and the passions of men, as the Republic has resisted all the 
political movements of history. On all sides are the broken 
stones of glorious monuments, in beautiful relief, the remains 
of tombs and temples, the relics of past civilization ; as if the 
ground had been a battle-field, where fought in ancient times, 
not armies of men, but worlds and planets. Going on a lit- 
tle, you see the tomb of Seneca. Tyranny does not like to 
hear the complaints of its victim, and art has derided tyran- 
ny, leaving in bass-relief a protest, repeated by ages, against 
the cruelty of tyrants. I, who had been trampling the dust 
of the Catacombs, could do no less than put my hand on the 
stones of that sepulchre. How many ideas of the ancient 
Stoics, and how many ideas of the primitive Christians form 
the foundation of our faith, of our code of morals? What 
soul has conceived the law to whose empire I find myself sub- 
mitting? What apostle or what martyr has raised the altar 
of my belief? Useless questions. Ask not of the cloud 
where it has been formed, nor of the lightning where it has 
been kindled, nor of the molecules which pervade your organ- 
ism how they have been created ; the universe is the labora- 
tory of life, and the universal conscience is the laboratory of 
ideas. Thus some engender them, others express them, 
these preach them, those die for them \ and even those who 
oppose and combat them aid in their development, till they 
pass into the common-sense of society. 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 229 

Mausoleums, above all those of ages widely apart, preserve 
cold ashes ; but they also preserve living ideas. Along the 
Via Appia, not far from an ancient circular tumulus, termi- 
nated by a small tower of the Middle Ages, is the grove of 
Cluilius, where tradition, since confirmed by Dionysius of 
Halicarnassus, puts the field of battle between Alba and 
Rome, consequently the tomb of the Horatii and the Curatii. 
Primitive inhabitants of this neighborhood, at the sight of so 
many ruins, which appear like skeletons, naturally love to re- 
cord the glorious days of Latin festivals, when they congre- 
gated upon the mountains of Albano to offer sacrifices, and 
from thence went to the grove of Albano to listen to the 
songs of the Fauns, and from the grove to the grotto of Tivoli 
to question the prophetic sibyl ; and while the women cele- 
brate in the bright days of spring, when the heavens smile 
and nature revives, festivals in honor of the god of the sheep- 
folds, girded with foliage, crowned with garlands, drinking 
between religious canticles the yet warm milk in cups just cut 
from oak-trees, you would acknowledge the nature around 
you, and see that nature in other times had not another life 
and other forms. And perhaps the creeds that will be substi- 
tuted for yours may not sufficiently remember that nature is 
living and immortal. .To-day the Grecian vessel bringing 
merchandise and knowledge is not anchored in your ports, 
the laughing and singing gods no longer sport in your fields ; 
the desert has encroached upon their hearths and temples, 
the battles have spared but the mute and motionless inhabit- 
ants of the tombs. 



230 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

Good Friday, consecrated to the dead; the Via Appia, the 
road of tombs; Rome, the great necropolis; all, all spoke to 
me of the departed. And all invited me to reflect upon this 
great mystery. We imagine ourselves absolute monarchs in 
nature, and we live under laws we do not comprehend. Why 
this interruption of death ? Why this dark stone of the tomb 
rolled from an unfathomable abyss to the dim border of anoth- 
er unfathomable abyss ? Let us be comforted. The natural 
dynamics are not interrupted. We leave the corpse in the 
grave, and we return, grief-stricken, to mourn over the death of 
the one beloved ; but the corruption of the body is but a new 
form of existence, a new function of life, a new germination 
of beings. The want of nutritious juices in the stomach, the 
want of blood in the veins, the want of oxygen in the air, can 
these destroy man who proclaims himself lord of immortality ? 
Each organism is a little universe in the midst of the total, of 
the moral and material universe. By food, by respiration, by 
the continual change of atoms, we absorb the life of nature; as 
by synthesis, by generalization, we expand the concrete and in- 
dividual soul in the human spirit. As light and color are iden- 
tical in the universe, as the grave and the sharp tones combine 
in harmony; as the carbonic exhalations of animal respiration, 
and oxygenic exhalations of vegetable respiration in the at- 
mosphere, so life and death combine in our being. From these 
oppositions result the highest of life's pleasures. Unsatisfied 
desire is a pain. Love is a desire unsatisfied, inextinguishable ; 
and love is a felicity. When the desire is accomplished, the 
passion which gave rise to it is no more. And satisfied desire 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 231 

is no longer desire. Then to preserve desire is to preserve 
love, to preserve pain is to preserve happiness. To preserve 
death is to preserve life. Death is a resurrection. 

I understand all the sublimity of the symbol of the Church 
on the celebration of the Resurrection. It is a day of uni- 
versal rejoicing. It happens in the season of the earth's res- 
urrection. The warm and reviving breath of spring covers 
and renews the wearied earth. The snows melt and send 
down their clear waters to the rivers. The fields are clothed 
with verdure, the verdure with flowers, and the flowers with 
butterflies. Apple-trees and almonds, orange and lemon trees 
look like so many bouquets. The birds give themselves up 
to music and to love. The buds swell with sap, and the larvae 
become transformed into painted insects. The ant comes 
forth from her nest and the bee from her honeycomb. The 
bells, which were silent for three days, ring out joyfully. The 
peasants all wear their festal costumes. The Virgin Mother, 
heretofore weeping, is decked with garlands to meet her di- 
vine Son, and, in the Easter procession through our fields and 
villages, all intone the canticle of the resurrection : Hallelu- 
jah ! Hallelujah ! We seem to behold the Crucified rise from 
his bed of marble, burst his shroud, break the stone, and re- 
turn to life in resplendent glory. The poppies wore a deeper 
red, the flowers of the almonds had a more rosy blush, the 
orange blossoms were more fragrant, the song of the birds was 
sweeter on that day when our souls were touched with holy 
mysticism. Nature was most beautiful. The internal vision 
did not withdraw me from the external world. Pious travel- 



23 2 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

ers have assured me that they have heard in crossing the 
ranges of the Andes mysterious sounds from the birds which 
imitated the human voice. Let us convert the universe into 
the expression of our thoughts,- the echoes of the words mur- 
mured by conscience in our ears. Holy joy of the Resurrec- 
tion Morn, blessed, blessed art thou ! I understand that the 
doctor of the German epopee, after having felt all the griefs 
and miseries of humanity, after having experienced all the dis- 
enchantments of science, being himself distracted by doubts 
and tortured by anxieties, thought to purify the poison ; and 
only dashed the fatal cup from his lips at the sound of the 
bells which announced the resurrection — of the hallelujahs 
which announced the Easter — those sacred rejoicings which 
can reconcile despair with nature and with life. 

On Easter Sunday in Rome I followed all the appointed re- 
ligious ceremonies. I listened to the gay ringing of the bells, 
went to the Basilica of St. Peter, and, crossing the great square, 
heard the murmur of the two fountains, throwing upward their 
jets of water ; I looked at the obelisk of Caligula, brought to 
Italy by the largest ship of all antiquity; I mounted the ma- 
jestic flight of marble steps leading to the church, and went 
into the interior with my feelings affected by the remembrance 
of my old impressions and illusions on the same festival. I 
was without the desire to criticise which attacks most of the 
visitors to the church of the Vatican. As fabulous riches 
have been expended there, as the first architects in the world 
have contributed to its embellishment, few can resist the 
temptation to criticism. " How absurd," some say, " was the 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 



233 



idea of Bramante, who proposed a still greater cupola than 
this!" "What a pity," exclaim others, "that the design of 
Raphael was not realized — -the Greek cross, which would have 
allowed us to see the rotunda from the entrance of the Ca- 
thedral." "Variety and decoration cleared Michael Angelo 
from the suspicion of opposing the plan of St. Galo," say some, 
" for he renounced the Gothic in his pyramids and his cupo- 
las, which was abominated in Pagan Rome ;" while many ob- 
serve that optical illusion alters the effect of the church; that 
its vastness can not be comprehended at the first glance; that 
the immensity of its dimensions damages its artistic beauty; 
that, from the extreme end, the door looks as if shrouded in a 
sort of mist; that it is necessary to walk two hundred paces 
along colossal pilasters, supporters of the immense lantern, 
in order to know by analysis the magnitude of this unique 
church ; that the wealth of the bronze and marbles is aston- 
ishing, but not overpowering; that the statues in violent atti- 
tudes show the epoch of sad decay, as also the great altar with 
its gilded columns, and the Holy Roman seat with the colossi 
in gilded bronze, representing four fathers of the Church, 
whose mantles seem to be filled and blown about by a tem- 
pest, and the Holy Ghost appearing amid transparent yellow 
crystals, which is like a dove falling on a gigantic fountain of 
well-beaten eggs. 

We need not in the church of the Vatican look for the mys- 
ticism which pervades our Gothic Cathedrals; that religious 
expression perceptible in the faces of the statues and effigies, 
which emanate from purely Catholic spirits ; the soft beauty 



234 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

of those rays of light filtered through many-colored windows. 
No; the classic genius, the classic spirit, raised the Roman 
temple to ideas separated from the fervent Catholic spirit — to 
Pagan ideas ; and the grandeur of the arches resemble the an- 
tique triumphal arches ; and the elevation of the gilded vaults, 
and the dimensions of the marvelous cupola ; of the richness 
of the marbles, whose shades vary from pearly white to opal, 
from opal to rose, from rose to lilac, from lilac to amethyst, 
and the glitter of the bronzes brilliant as native gold ; and the 
beauty of the mosaics, which represent in stones of lively col- 
ors the most precious pictures ; and the altars in all their dis- 
play, and the statues in their gigantic niches, and the angels 
with expanded wings, and the Popes extended on tombs of so 
many different forms and periods — constitute in reality, if not 
a Catholic temple, one of the grandest monuments in the 
world. 

The Pope passed through the Basilica. The ostentation 
with which he was accompanied on Palm Sunday was increased 
on Easter Sunday. The number of bishops and archbish- 
ops was much greater. Pius IX. wore a snowy mantle em- 
broidered with rich jewels, on his head the golden tiara, sur- 
mounted by three crowns of brilliants. Conducted to his place, 
he intoned High Mass with a melodious voice \ and after the 
mass he adored the holy relics with extraordinary devotion. 
This being accomplished, he ascended to the great window of 
St. Peter's, and showed himself to the multitude assembled in 
the great square. His arms were extended as if he would em- 
brace them all \ his voice was full of feeling and intensity ; 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 235 

and Rome and the entire world were blessed by his words 
and his hands. I, in the midst of the exclamations of the vast 
concourse, of the ringing of bells, the roar of cannons, the 
sound of thrilling music, the joy painted on every countenance, 
thought how truly that benediction would spread through the 
entire world ; how it would extend from the frigid regions of 
the North to the sunny lands of the tropics ; and how it would 
be welcomed among all people, even among those who believe 
themselves most emancipated from the Catholic Church — in 
Britain, by the Irish ; in Russia, by the Poles \ in America, by 
the States of the South ; in Germany, by the Bavarians \ in 
the whole world by the ancient Portuguese and Spanish Colo- 
nies, which have sown Asia, Africa, and xAm erica with church- 
es, and have displayed the symbol of Nicaea both to the Indi- 
ans of the Old Hemisphere and to those of the New. 

If, with all these ceremonies, it is intended to prove that 
Rome preserves her ancient predominance over the world, the 
consequences are marvelous. No other city possesses this 
power. Benedictions are not sent from Parisian palaces to 
Patagonian cabins. No other city can exhibit her first magis- 
trate blessed in all tongues, adored in all regions, borne to 
the height of a real and true divinity ; no other can say that 
her laws are the moral code of a considerable part of the world, 
or that her sovereign reigns in the consciences of peoples 
scattered throughout the globe. The bishops are true prefects, 
empowered to maintain the moral superiority of Rome over 
all nations. We are tributaries — tributaries like the ancient 
Roman provinces — tributaries of the spiritual Caesar, who 



236 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

blesses or curses us at his pleasure from his immense sanctu- 
ary of the Vatican. Formerly the various churches opposed 
some check to him, the different nationalities kept up the rich 
variety of life though under the same Pope. Now he has no 
curb whatever. Now he declares his infallibility ; the Pope is 
the whole Church. In vain the bishops, assembled in coun- 
cil, warned him of the enormous risk to the unity of Catholi- 
cism ; in vain the prelate of Orleans, an enthusiastic friend of 
the Pope, designated the new dogmas as dangerous innova- 
tions ; in vain the eloquent Strossmayer, who so energetically 
protested against the rupture of the Austrian Concordat, made 
his thrilling words vibrate in the ears of the Episcopacy, to 
save them from a shameful abdication ; in vain Dollinger ap- 
pealed to science to demonstrate that nothing so monstrous 
had ever been attempted, except by the Councils of Lateran, 
true ante -chambers of the King of Rome; in vain Father 
Gratry proved that Pope Honorius had been condemned in 
the Sixth (Ecumenical Council for declaring the heresy of 
those who denied the two natures in the person of the Re- 
deemer; in vain Cardinal Schwarzenberg reminded them that 
after the pretensions of Boniface VIII. to absolute dominion 
over the world's conscience, there came dissensions, religious 
wars, schisms, submissions on the part of the Pontificate ; all 
in vain. An assembly restrained by servile regulations, push- 
ed forward by continual decrees of the Pope, placed under the 
influence of the invader Jesuitism, incapacitated from sustain- 
ing the moral unanimity indispensable in the proclamations 
of dogmas ; then a hundred and forty bishops, the most elo- 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 237 

quent, the most learned, and of the most enlightened dioceses, 
opposed it. An assembly under these circumstances, among 
violent protests, after the departure of the most illustrious 
and the most celebrated councilors, arrived, one stormy even- 
ing, which was like a premature night, at the deification of 
Pius IX. ! From thence he alone upon the earth was superior 
to all humanity ! Like a god wandering through our lower re . 
gions, he was above the errors and weaknesses common to 
our limited and most frail nature ! 

Antiquity has also its apotheosis. The man who attained 
the dignity of Caesar was not content with being Caesar, he as- 
pired to be God. The senate assembled and decreed divinity 
to its tyrants. Consuls, priests, vestals, flocked around Caesar, 
crowned him, placed him upon an altar, wreathed him with 
garlands, decapitated victims in his honor, with sacred songs 
and offerings of odoriferous myrrh, celebrated his birth and 
his immortality with innumerable festivals. 

But the equality of life, the impartiality of death, the implac- 
able justice which shows us all to be but children of the 
earth, subject to identical law r s, denied these apotheoses ; and 
far from raising a man above the level of his fellows, such su- 
preme arrogance depressed him even to placing him below 
our nature. Sorrow and labor, pain and error, necessarily ex- 
ist in the limited conditions of humanity, and consequently 
the men-gods fall quickly — very quickly — as fell the Pharaohs 
and the Nebuchadnezzars. And it happened that the ages of 
the apotheoses were the ages fatal to Paganism. When men 
entered into heaven, the gods retreated. The people left oft' 



238 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

going to the temple of Delphi, from whence they saw the sum- 
mit of Parnassus, where was heard the murmur of the fountain 
Castalia, of which the Pythoness speaks in verses which con- 
tain the secrets of the future ; where were celebrated the Pyth- 
ian games and the popular assemblies, where Apollo scat- 
tered light upon the head of the mother Greece, and inspira- 
tion on her soul. In vain a man of genius, a philosopher, 
orator, poet, warrior, hero, and artist — Giulio — wished to re- 
store, idealize, and renew the old dogma with the new meta- 
physics \ the sacrifices had been interrupted, the altars were 
destroyed, Paganism was extinguished, because having com- 
menced by the deification of the natural forces which rule the 
universe, it ended by the deification of the Caesars and of the 
Pontiffs. 

Easter Day in Rome ! After having been at the Catholic 
mass, at the Pontifical benediction, I asked myself if in reali- 
ty any thing has been recuscitated in these latter days upon 
the earth, upon the earth of the resurrection in the sixteenth 
century, upon the earth of the Renaissance. Here is Galatea, 
there Psyche, yonder are the muses dancing around the an- 
cient Parnassus ; on one side the schools of Athens, more liv- 
ing and more beautiful than they ever were in reality \ on the 
other side the sibyls raised to the height of sublimity to make 
known the oracles. In one compartment is Diana, with the 
half-moon upon her forehead, the bow in her hands, followed 
by her nymphs, and greeted by the woods ; in another, Aurora 
opening her gates to the eternal day : all around are triumph- 
al arches and beautiful statues, from which the ancient art of 
sculpture was reborn in all its serene perfection. 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 $g 

But the Middle Age has had no resurrection ; for, while the 
political supremacy of the Holy See has been sustained, the 
predominance of the clergy over the other social classes, the 
direction of European politics by the Popes, the religious and 
feudal character of the ancient patrimony of St. Peter, the in- 
quisition for the conscience, the censure for the thoughts, the 
mixture of temporal and spiritual authority in one person, the 
anathema, against which there is no appeal, over the State 
which is independent, over the laic schools, over civil matri- 
mony, over religious liberty and printing — the Middle Age 
has not only not arisen, but could not have arisen in Rome. 
Oh, Popes ! the gods you have wished to annihilate have 
arisen, if not in the heaven of religion, in another heaven, 
which is more beautiful — that of art \ while the spirit of the 
Middle Age, which you intended to revive, sinks every day 
more into the past ! All that you have cursed is born anew; 
all dies which you desire should exist. Does this say nothing 
to the infallible Pope ; nothing to the god of the Vatican ? 

But I will not be exclusive and intolerant. The eighteenth 
century, in its work of destruction, and looking upon life from 
one aspect only, may have believed in the necessity of de- 
stroying all the Middle Age. The nineteenth century, in its 
work of reconstruction, of reconciliation, can not deny that ten 
centuries, a thousand years, have been useless to human prog- 
ress, and have left nothing in the foundation of our civiliza- 
tion and culture. That spiritualistic tendency, that idealism 
of the Middle Ages, ought to be renewed in our age, without 
its exclusive character, reconciling itself with nature and with 



240 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

science. In order that our civilization should be perfect, we 
must of necessity kindle upon it the clear light and purifying 
fire of true idealism. Miracles are repeated every day in the 
natural sciences, in the exact sciences, in the physical sciences, 
in all that has for its object the material and the sensible. 
We know how to observe and to calculate better than any 
other age ; but do we know with equal perfection how to feel ? 
do we know how to think ? We understand the sun : we are 
sure that his bulk is one million four hundred thousand times 
greater than that of the earth, and that, moving at the rate of 
seventy kilometres an hour, it would take us two hundred 
and seventy years to arrive at his burning surface; and that this 
mighty star, if put in one scale of a balance, would require 
three hundred and fifty thousand terraqueous globes like ours 
in the other scale to preserve the equilibrium. We know all 
this of the sun, which is at such an immense distance from 
our vision, and we scarcely know any thing of our pwn con- 
sciences, of that internal sun which we carry within us and 
possess forever! 

The marvels of physical science are not interrupted. At 
one time we discover in the Milky Way phenomena which al- 
most evade the power of our dynamics ; now we know the 
changes which twenty years have made in the nebulae of 
Orion ; we see the course of ages in the planet, the appear- 
ance of the first species of animal and vegetable life, the 
awakening of the infusoria on those sea-banks formed during 
the oceanic epoch, the causes of the wondrous vegetation re- 
vealed by buried carbon ; while astronomy connects us with 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 2 $l 

the universe, and geology evokes recollections of the historic 
world, chemistry reveals the secrets of existence. Priestley 
discovered oxygen, Lavoissier analyzed the atmosphere, and 
found therein the gas which favors, and the gas which threat- 
ens human life. He detected virtues, before concealed, in 
different minerals which assisted agriculture ; as he found a 
great number of alkaloids, till then unknown, which gave 
new acids to medicine. Electricity came to add to these won- 
ders. 

From the mysteries of Cagliostro we come to the clear ex- 
periments of Galvani, who lent movement and apparent ani- 
mation by his electric sparks to the limbs of dead animals. 
From the rudimentary and imperfect experiments of Galvani, 
we arrived at the knowledge of the electric fluid and its laws, 
thanks to Volta, who placed mechanically a piece of damp 
newspaper on his lip, between thin plates of zinc and copper, 
and found their wonderful relation ; so that in perfecting these 
discoveries he arrived at the great fountain of electricity 
through the means attained by the Voltaic combination. 
Morse — a man belonging to the race of Franklin, the first 
whom nature thought worthy to hold the lightning in his 
hand, till then reserved for the Deity — Morse invented the 
telegraph, and put the electro-magnetic fluid, the soul of fear- 
ful tempests, under the dominion of man. 

The human thought, notwithstanding its infinite intensity, 
wants power to follow all the advances made from steam, 
magnetism, electricity, the discovery of new gases, and the 
composition of chemical substances, the explorations of tele- 

L 



242 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN, 

scopes in the heavens, the discoveries of travelers on the 
earth, the ascension in the atmosphere, the descent into mines 
and into the depths of the sea, the classification of dead as 
well as of living species, the progress of physiology which re- 
gards our bodies, and the progress of the cosmogony which 
studies the universe. 

But can we boast of equal moral and equal physical great- 
ness ? Do we not err by excess of materialism, as did the 
ancient classic world ? Do we not sin by forgetting the soul 
we bear within us, and the God who animates the universe? 
It is indispensable to raise a grand ideal before the eyes of 
this materialistic civilization. I know how much exclusive 
vocations are opposed to this. Thus, as there are ears which 
can not perceive the harmony of music, eyes which do not see 
the beauty of landscapes, so there are souls which do not feel 
the necessity of religion. But human societies can not be ex- 
clusive ; human societies always contend, as in the law, as in 
art, in science, in labor, as in that other end of the serious 
part of life — religion. But in proportion as the material prog- 
ress is great, the spirit religious, the inspiration artistic, it 
should hold more tenaciously to idealism. And the god of 
the Vatican — that species of material idol, clothed with bro- 
cades, crowned with diamonds, enveloped in clouds of in- 
cense, intoxicated with the adulation once offered to the dei- 
fied Caesars of antiquity — does not respond to the necessities 
of our epoch, nor slake with his theocratic doctrines the in- 
extinguishable thirst of our spirit. In Rome, under the shad- 
ow of so many temples, in that labyrinth of altars, at the sight 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 243 

of the innumerable cupolas, from whence have ascended as by 
a mysterious stair countless prayers to Heaven, over the ruins 
heaped on those sacred plains by devouring ages, the recol- 
lections of dead gods are scattered to the winds, and the 
heart is raised to the living Jehovah, One, Absolute, Eternal; 
that Being, Essence, Truth, Good, Perfection; the God of 
Nature and of the Spirit, elevated above all the changes and 
transformations of history, and who communicates to our souls 
the ineffable hope of immortality. 

This great idea grows with the growth of the conscience, 
and is purified with its purification. Revelation is not over, 
no, though some believe the fountain is exhausted. The age 
of reason commences, and we know not what light and heat 
reason will bear in her bosom. The Indian Zeus, born at the 
foot of those high mountains, perfumed with the aroma of 
those leafy groves, received in his cradle of palms the light 
which spread from nation to nation and from generation to 
generation, till it reached the summit of the Greek Olympus. 
And one day, among the people protected by the Holy God, 
burst forth the revelation of the unity of the human con- 
science, a necessary completion to the unity of the divine nat- 
ure which was revealed among the lightnings of Sinai. And 
these two most grand ideas grew and were spiritualized in the 
dialogues of the. Academy, at the magic influence of the elo- 
quence of Plato, as an infusion of the Deity into the veins of 
man ; and when thought, extended and enlightened, was able 
to reduce metaphysics to morals, and from morals passed to 
law, it became essential to universalize it in the minds of the 



244 THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 

multitude, to give it to the people, that so much labor should 
not be lost, that so many revelations should not remain as 
ideas without reality and without form in the vague abstrac- 
tion of the schools. The belief in its generality, in its pure 
abstraction, seems to be a spirit without a body — it neither 
agitates minds nor alarms the interested. But a new concep- 
tion, preached in the free air, told in the ears of the people, 
clashes with the general feeling of its time, and provokes the 
wrath of superstition and ignorance. For this the Redeemer 
was wanted ; the Redeemer born to diffuse the truth and take 
it to human hearts, to speak it as an incessant prayer on His 
most eloquent lips, to spread it among the people, who kin- 
dled the anger of the old idols and strictest sects, who gave 
His life in fearful torments for the weak, for the humble, for 
the oppressed, for the disinherited of the world. And the re- 
ligion of the Redeemer became embodied in a Church at first 
believed to be the work of one sole people, of one single sect; 
but afterward opened to the invasion of all races, to the in- 
fluence of all doctrines, by means of the genius ever found in 
the virtue of innovators, the elevation of philosophers, the elo- 
quence of apostles, the heroism of martyrs. And revelation 
has not been interrupted. Some have brought to it the Judaic 
and Shemitic spirit; others the Hellenic-Latin; others the Al- 
exandrian. Those four mysterious cities which hold in their 
hands the web of European civilization — Jerusalem, Rome, 
Athens, Alexandria — spoke ; and their words were preserved 
and raised to heaven by the divine Word. And the infinite 
series of revelations has not been interrupted ; because there 



THE GOD OF THE VATICAN. 24 g 

came the revelation of art in the Renaissance, the revelation 
of science in philosophy, the revelation of the right in the 
great revolutions, whose electric current has created man 
anew, and brought, in tongues of fire, a divine spirit to the 
conscience. Alas! there are sects and dignitaries of the 
Church who believe their exclusive spirit, their narrow doc- 
trine, their egotistical feelings to be the spirit, the doctrine, 
and the feeling of humanity — of that immortal being whose 
conscience is as the space inclosing all great principles ; 
whose thought is as the sun enlightening the worlds ; whose 
spirit is as the air giving life and vigor. Ruins are skeletons 
accumulated by ages. Doctrine arises from some altar and 
moves ceaselessly onward to others, reborn continually from 
its ashes, transforming itself into an infinite series of develop- 
ments, as a perpetual renovation of the earth, and a never- 
ending holocaust which sends an eternal cloud of incense to- 
ward the heavens. 



ESTABLISHED 1875. 




Chapter IX. 

THE GHETTO. 

From the greatest height to the deepest abyss — after the 
Vatican, the Ghetto ! The district inhabited by the Jews in 
Rome is called the Ghetto. A population within another 
population astonishes many, but not the Spaniards. It is 
nearly four hundred years since we expelled our Jews, reserv- 
ing to ourselves the right to burn all those who imitated or 
followed them — all Judaizers ; even yet we have in our cities 
well-known quarters where Jewry dares not enter. Remem- 
ber Toledo ! The Church of San Juan de los Reyes, on the 
hill-side near the Cambron Gate and the Bridge of St. Mar- 
tin ; also the Church of the Transito, with its arched windows, 
its rich inlaid work, its vaults of cedar incrusted with gold 
and marble, the psalms written on its walls in Hebraic char- 
acters, like the Church of Santa Maria la Blanca, with its oc- 
tagonal columns, its Syrian capitals, its horse -shoe arches; 
both these churches are ancient synagogues, and show that 
there dwelt the Children of Israel — those tenacious worship- 
ers of the one true God — those pursued by the Goths who 
revenged their affronts in Guadelete, the wealthy merchants, 
the untiring workers — those who disseminated the teaching 
of he Arab schools of Cordova, of Seville, of Toledo, through 



THE GHETTO. 247 



the south of France, and through all the regions of Italy — 
those who demonstrated to Don Alonso VI. that they had no 
part in the death of the Saviour — those who aided in the la- 
bors of Don Alonso the Wise — those wounded by the sword 
of Enrique de Trastamara — those spit upon and beaten by 
the eloquence of San Vincente Ferrar — those expelled by the 
piety of Dona Isabel, the Catholic — the Jews of Toledo. 

These Israelites are truly an extraordinary race. We our- 
selves have swallowed innumerable successions of gods. The 
divinities of the Phoenicians, of the Greeks, of the Romans, 
joined to our aboriginal deities, have fallen into the depths 
of our consciences, and have in time passed from our con- 
sciences. Even now the great Catholic theology, but lately 
cherished like the essence of our spirit, is passing away. Our 
soul is changing because it is progressive. Among Western 
peoples, those who think often neither pray nor believe — 
those who pray and believe do not think. We pass the sec- 
ond half of our life destroying with our reason the creeds 
inspired by the education and the faith of the first half. No, 
as a people, we are not religious ! And these Jews still 
speak like Abraham, sing the same psalms as David, keep 
the idea of God treasured as the manna of souls in the des- 
ert, obey the law given from Sinai, overcome the captivity of 
Babylon, the cajoleries of Alexander, the irresistible sceptre 
of Rome, the dispersion exacted by Titus, the maledictions 
of the Popes, the mandates of Kings, the rage of the people, 
the flames of the Inquisition, the intolerance of all sects ; and 
between the currents of ideas which ceaselesslv move and 



248 THE GHETTO. 



transform those around, they, as if they were beyond time and 
change, rebuild in their hearts their ruined temple, where 
they preserve unaltered their ancient faith and their consol- 
ing hopes. 

Guided by a double sentiment of compassion and curiosity, 
I went to visit the Jews' quarter in Rome. Cleanliness is 
unthought of in the Eternal City. Heaps of dirt surround you 
at every crossing. The clear streams which flow along gigan- 
tic aqueducts and through monumental fountains are wasted, 
neither cleansing the heights of hills nor the depths of the 
valleys, as if they were lost under the earth. The Tiber is 
truly the river of the sewers. Its yellow waters look like a 
flow of gall. The Eternal City is a dirty town. To say truth, 
one must hold his nostrils to inhale those spiritual aromas 
which intoxicated the soul of Louis Veuillot. The Jews' quar- 
ter is filthy and disgusting. The feet sink in those revolting 
streets, which resemble ill-kept pig- sties. Half- naked chil- 
dren, so incrusted with dirt that they look as if covered with 
leprosy, play in all directions. Old women with wrinkled and 
yellow complexions, gray hair, watery eyes, and a sinister ex- 
pression on their withered lips, stand at the doors of the 
little shops, which look like rat-traps. Each of these dens 
emits an insufferable odor. With the Jewish race there are 
mingled some gypsy families, fallen from a higher position, 
and living now under the same malediction. Some of these 
poor women, whom the Inquisition would have burned for 
cheating, robbery, and above all for witchcraft, invite the stran- 
ger in an almost unintelligible guttural to have his fortune 



THE GHETTO. 249 



told upon the cards. Several groups of people, seated on 
stones, play cards, the games being much like those in use in 
the southern parts of Spain. When any difficulty, fraud, or 
dispute arises, they utter cries which are heard all over the 
Ghetto. Some gnash their teeth, others clench their fists, 
pour forth threatening words, and gesticulate as if about to 
engage in a pitched battle. The children add to the noise 
and confusion by screaming around the circle. The women 
look out of the windows, participate in the general emotion, 
and take sides in the quarrel, being guided, not by truth and 
reason, but by their feelings, which tell them their nearest re- 
lations are in the right. Hear them, but beware of mixing 
yourself in the fray, or you will probably be beaten and 
bruised by the excited and angry crowd. In the Ghetto you 
must limit your observations to the squalid and filthy streets, 
the hideous dens, the yellow and miserable-looking popula- 
tion, the rags hanging from the windows, and the thick atmos- 
phere of pestilential vapors which surrounds that pandemo- 
nium, where dwell the representatives of the race which above 
all others keeps true to its belief in its ancient history and 
religious principles. 

The keeping up of old ideas is a virtue beloved by the 
Popes, but the Jews have never found favor under the Pon- 
tificate. 

However, the condition of the Israelites has considerably 
improved under the present Pope. The iron chains which 
separated them from the rest of the population, and kept them 
prisoners, have fallen, thanks to the liberal views of Pius IX, 

L 2 



250 



THE GHETTO. 



There is no longer any necessity for them to bury themselves 
in their dens after nightfall, and they are free to go where 
they will about the city. The tribute of fifty centimes per 
head, formerly exacted from the Jews, has not been demanded 
from them since 1848. They rarely take advantage of the 
privilege of being able to live in any part of the city, on ac- 
count of the great difficulty of finding quarters as cheap as 
those of their own district, where rent and taxes have been 
mercifully fixed at a low rate by some old Pontifical decrees. 
But how these Jews have suffered ! Tacitus made them the 
subjects of his bitter invectives, and Lucian of his contempt- 
uous mockeries. They were most cruelly treated by the Em- 
perors, who on many occasions flung them as food for the 
wild beasts of the circus. They were also persecuted with 
the Christians, even though they abominated the novelties 
brought by Christianity to their belief. They were ill-treated 
by the barbarous nations recently converted to the Christian 
faith. They were isolated and shut out from the rest of the 
world by the Popes. And, notwithstanding all this, there are 
countries where the persecution was still more implacable 
against the Israelites than in Rome — countries where the rec- 
ords o£ them remain only in history. Let us admire their 
faith and firmness. For one of their religion who abjures his 
faith, vast numbers retain it. The deepest of their thinkers 
believe that the human race has wandered because it has ad- 
mitted with Christianity the metaphysical ideas of the Greek 
school, in the theological dogma of the unity of God, and in 
the severe and sublime decalogue of Moses. They believe 



THE GHETTO. 



25 J 



that the Jewish people will renounce their supremacy as a 
sacerdotal people, as a Levitical people, the day that their 
brothers, the Christian sectarians, renounce the anthropomor- 
phic ideas of Greece. And humanity, united in the same spir- 
it from which right only is derived, will be enabled to purify 
its conscience in the great principle of the divine Unity, and 
its will in the strict precepts of the Decalogue. These ideas 
do not circulate through the minds of the poor Jews of the 
Ghetto, whose imaginations have been compressed into the 
narrowest compass by persecution, but the cement of a solid 
faith binds them to all of their own religion. 

I can not understand how some religious writers wonder at 
this Jewish steadfastness. Why then does not all Roman life 
participate in the same immovability? Is there any other 
part of the world whose history is so eventful ? Still the 
nymph Egeria is heard in the grotto of Numa ; still the 
shades of the tribunes wander on the heights of Aventino. 
On descending to the Catacombs, imagination brings back 
the Christian Agapae \ and when coming through the Via Ap- 
pia, after having visited the sepulchres, fancy conjures from 
the past a funeral of ancient Rome. The desolation which 
the wrong doings of the patricians produced on those ma- 
jestic plains exhales to-day the same deadly vapors. The 
Caesar-Popes still inhabit the gardens of Nero. The archi- 
tecture of antiquity still overawes the Catholic spirit. The 
Roman aristocracy shows still the debility contracted in the 
times of the Empire, when the perpetual dictators who suc- 
ceeded to Caesar laid clown their arms, and with them all their 



THE GHETTO, 



dignity. The clergy close their eyes to the voice of reason, 
struggle against all progress, oppose all reformation, just as 
the priests of Paganism, when crowned with verbena, waved 
their sacrificial wands of gold over the invading legions of the 
Goths, and forbade the proclamation of Christianity as the 
religion of the Empire by the Senate of Theodosius. And if 
you attentively examine the lower classes, you at once per- 
ceive the features of antiquity, not only in the Grecian profile 
and in the Roman muscle, but in the mixture of pride and in- 
dolence ; like a people accustomed to be amused by all others, 
and who are at the same time supported and taken care of 
by a ruler. 

The Jews show a wonderful tenacity of conscience and re- 
ligion. And what cruel attacks have been made against this 
tenacity. The same repugnance exists against them in Rome 
as against the Chuetans in Majorca. In this age of religious 
tolerance, of democratic institutions, we have seen expelled 
from a public ball in Majorca those citizens who belonged to 
the race of Chueta, that is, those descended from Israelites. 
The Roman Catholicism of these people, raised to the most 
extreme exaltation, has not exempted them from the conse- 
quences of their original error. There are towns in the island 
which consider it a glory never to have admitted a Chueta 
within their precincts. And some of these Chuetans signed 
in the year 1854 several reasons against religious liberty, al- 
though the quemadero is scarcely yet cold on which the bones 
of their fathers were consumed in the fire. I have been unable 
to ascertain if those observers of the Catalan rites, now in use 



THE GHETTO. 



2 53 



among the four synagogues of the Ghetto, will have any deal- 
ings with the accursed race of Majorca. Never have I be- 
held such love of country as that manifested by the Spanish 
Jews. So much injustice, so much cruel oppression, has not 
been able to inspire them with a mistrust for their mother 
country, which has been for them a step-mother. I knew in 
Florence a Jewish couple who had come from Damascus, and 
were traveling through Europe. The wife was the Oriental 
type of most perfect beauty. Her pale complexion, toned by 
the lustre of her large black eyes, half veiled by long and 
shadowy eyelashes, appeared between the rich curls of hair, 
fine and brilliant as silk. Her nose was Grecian, as that of 
the Venus of Milo ; her lips rosy as the bright carmine of the 
pomegranate blossom. My attention was drawn to so much 
loveliness, and hers was attracted by the language of my 
country, which I was speaking with some Spaniards and 
Americans. Immediately she turned to her husband and said 
some words to hiirfin Spanish. The national language, spoken 
in a foreign land, vibrated in the ears of the exile, overcame 
and transported him like the most harmonious music. Being 
unable to restrain my emotion, I said, "Senora, are you Span- 
ish ?" Then she told me that she was a Jewess, born in Leg- 
horn, and married to a Greek residing in Damascus ; that she 
had learned Spanish in the synagogue of her country, and 
that she was accustomed to speak it with those of her religion 
in the East, many of whom had preserved it as a pious souvenir 
of their origin, as a glorious stamp of their nationality. The 
most lively affections are always those arising from contrasts. 



254 



THE GHETTO. 



My love of country, intense as it is, seemed but feeble com- 
pared with the love of this race for Spain, which persecuted 
them as if they had been savage beasts, insulted them by all 
kinds of affronts, rooted them out of their national earth, dis- 
persed and exiled them for four centuries ; yet toward which 
they turn the loving eyes of children, still speaking her lan- 
guage, as the Israelites of old intoned the songs of the proph- 
ets on the banks of the Euphrates, under the weeping-willows 
of Babylon. 

Thinking and feeling thus, I saw as in a magnetic vision 
the political movement which is to break the chain of ancient 
traditions in my country, and I vowed if I should at any fut- 
ure time obtain the confidence of my fellow-citizens in the ex- 
alted post of legislator, to make ceaseless exertions till we 
were no longer in the modern world a monstrous exception to 
other nations by our intolerance, and to open the doors of our 
country alike to all sects, to all peoples, and to all ideas ; to 
hold as a sacred right, compared to which all other rights are 
as nothing, the right to open the mind to light, and to adore 
in public as in secret the God who lives in our conscience. 

How much I was influenced in the accomplishment of this 
promise, given by my heart and my intelligence, by the recol- 
lection of that pale and miserable Jewish population of the 
Ghetto, steeped in ignorance and poverty ! And as on enter- 
ing the Pontifical States we are forced to compare their pro- 
hibitive custom-houses with the free commerce of the Swiss 
Republic, so, on seeing the filthy quarter of the Roman Jews, 
we remember the religious liberty of Geneva, the full right en- 



THE GHETTO. 



255 



joyed by all there to worship as they desire, the supplications 
addressed to God by the Children of Israel in the republican 
language of the prophets that He should preserve to Switzer- 
land her free institutions, where the light of different con- 
sciences shines like stars in the immensity of the heavens. 

Truly the Jewish people have admirably preserved their re- 
ligion in the court of the chiefs of Roman Catholicism, where 
the Catholics have persecuted the Jews, tortured and pro- 
scribed them. But if this is a proof on one side of some toler- 
ance in the Popes, on the other hand it is a proof of the re- 
markable tenacity of the Jews. They have preserved their 
identity and their religion, it is true, but they have done so in 
great misery. The prohibition to acquire landed property 
condemns them continually to commerce. And commerce is 
unfruitful without frugality, and frugality is unproductive un- 
less it is transformed into property. For this reason, as soon 
as the Roman Jew by his industry has been enabled to gather 
together a sum of money, he leaves his poor abode, and goes 
in search of milder laws than those of the Eternal City. So 
in the dens of the Ghetto you only find those hungry and 
wretched Jews who traffic in old lumber of all kinds, and who 
gain barely sufficient to sustain their feeble lives and to warm 
now and then their melancholy abodes. 

No one can deny that Pius IX. has considerably improved 
the condition of the Jews. But the latter still feel the power 
of tyranny and the scourge of theocracy. To be able to com- 
prehend this position, one must study rationalistic and revolu- 
tionary authors, one must read the works of Catholics on this 



256 THE GHETTO. 



subject. At first sight it is extremely difficult to discover the 
truth among the contradictory judgments pronounced upon 
Rome by those irreconcilable schools — the Catholic and the 
Rationalistic. The times are past in which the clergy, like 
the Archprelate of Hita, and Catholics like Hurtado de Men- 
doza, tyrannized in Rome. Already for great numbers of 
Catholics, their religion is no longer a religion, but a political 
party. And consequently its doctrines are not so much dog- 
mas which require explanations, as polemics which demand 
dates and arguments. On the other hand Roman Catholicism 
is for many a domination which should be destroyed at all 
costs, as galley-slaves should at all efforts break their fetters. 
Some see only in the Eternal City the virtues of Catholicism, 
others only see its abominations. It is difficult to deduce the 
truth from these contradictions, which influence even the most 
trifling details. A Liberal journal will tell you that there exist 
ki Pontifical Rome two thousand women devoted to the peril- 
ous office of models ; and a religious paper will declare that 
the perfidy of their enemies has falsified the number by two 
ciphers. The Journal of the Debates relates the following 
atrocity : 

" The Romans are brutalized and degraded to such an ex- 
tent, and are so blood-thirsty, that it is their custom to shut 
themselves up in a large hall, and there, after having extin- 
guished all the lights, to satiate their desire for butchery by 
mutually wounding each other with daggers. This frightful 
slaughter is called by the name of acciata" 

A Roman Catholic, an apostolic prothonotary, in speaking 



THE GHETTO. 257 



of this gives the following explanation, which I copy liter- 
ally: 

66 Father Caravita founded not a hall, as the Voltairian jour- 
nal declares, but an oratory. This Father Caravita was a 
Jesuit of the ancient order. He assembled in the oratory 
people of good life and morals, to ask in common of heaven 
the conversion of sinners. This pious society soon took dif- 
ferent denominations, and became extended over the whole of 
the Christian world. It was open alternately to men at night, 
and to women in the day-time. From the commencement of 
the ceremony five or six priests were seated in the confession- 
als and received the confessions of the sins committed, which 
they pardoned in the name of God. They counted in a year 
fifty thousand absolutions of prodigal sons, who, conquering 
their human scruples under the shades of darkness, came to 
purify their consciences and to find repose. While some con- 
fessed or prepared themselves for confession, others kneeling 
on the pavement recited the litany to the Virgin and chanted 
psalms in choir. The prayers concluded, a priest descended 
from the great altar and distributed among those who de- 
manded them flexible cords, with the extremities well pre- 
pared. Then all the lights were extinguished, and in the 
midst of total darkness a priest in a loud voice exhorted the 
congregation to penance and contrition. Affected by his ad- 
dress they prostrated themselves, and, when he had finished 
speaking, they lashed their shoulders with repeated blows 
during the whole time of the chanting of the Litany and the 
Nunc Dimittis, till the words lumen ad revelationcm, when the 
tapers were again lighted." 



258 THE GHETTO. 



Reading and comparing both these relations, one can easily 
arrive at the truth. I read in an author worthy of the Index 
that the Popes compel the Jews to go every week, at least 
once, to hear a Catholic sermon directed expressly against 
them and their doctrines, in order to touch their hearts and 
to attract them toward the true religion. At first I did not 
believe such an enormity. Could there be a greater outrage 
to the inviolability of the human conscience ? Is it possible ? 
I believe that such a temple is a shadow instead of a light; 
that such a service is a superstition instead of a sacred cere- 
mony ; that such a doctrine is an error instead of a truth; and 
I oblige myself to enter these temples, to be present at this 
worship, to hear these doctrines torturing my soul and her be- 
lief with miserable agitations. The most offensive and insuf- 
ferable of all tyrannies is that imposed upon the thoughts, for, 
without offending in any way, I am permitted neither obser- 
vation nor reply ; arguments are brought forward with insults 
more or less painful to my religion — that which constitutes 
the soul of my soul, the blood of my heart, the very essence 
of my spirit, that intimate faith under whose protection I live 
and hope to die, that religious belief which is my national law, 
the tie which attaches me to life, my hope for all eternity. 
And I can not picture by any force of imagination what would 
be the sufferings of some pious persons whom I know and es- 
teem, if they were compelled to go every week to a temple 
where they would hear evil spoken of Christ and His mother, 
where that Scripture would be denied which renews their 
strength and fortifies their souls. To me it appears that such 



THE GHETTO. 2 ^g 



a proceeding ignores altogether that evangelical maxim which 
obliges us to do unto others as we would they should do unto 
us, the peace of our hearts and of our souls, the inviolability 
of our consciences, and the comfort of our lives. 

It is impossible to understand why the Jews should be out- 
raged in this manner — impossible. Even polemics are diffi- 
cult between them and Christians. We believe all the prin- 
cipal Jewish dogmas. Their God is our God, their law our 
law, their Bible our Bible. We have added the Gospel to the 
Old Testament ; to the monotheistical God of the Shemitical 
desert, the word and the spirit of Grecian metaphysics. The 
great difference is that we believe the Messiah has already 
come, and they look forward with hope to His appearing. 
For us redemption is consummated, for them it has yet to be 
accomplished. They can not comprehend that the prophecies 
have been fulfilled, when they have a national signification, 
and Israel is notwithstanding dispersed, and the temple of 
God is still in ruins. Go and tell them, if their own inspira- 
tion does not persuade them, that the poor Nazarene, born in 
a lowly station, without other army than His apostles recruit- 
ed on the shores of Tiberias, without other arms than the 
words confided to the winds, without other throne than the 
cross, without other glory than death and the gibbet, is the 
all-powerful Messiah come to redeem His chosen people from 
serfdom. You would offend, but could not persuade them, 
and they will depart from the temple more wounded than edi- 
fied by your teaching; and, as a natural reaction, a hatred and 
blasphemy against our faith will become almost a necessity to 
their souls. 



260 THE GHETTO. 



And, nevertheless, it is impossible to doubt of this ancient 
custom, when the apostolic prothonotary Gaissiat, in his work 
entitled Rome Avenged, not only mentions but glories in it. 
He exults in narrating how the preacher explained and com- 
mented upon the Psalms read and chanted by the rabbi dur- 
ing the past week. He asseverates that he never heard in 
those discourses offensive words from the lips of the Israel- 
ites, which, if it does not arise from terror, proves a degree of 
prudence unfortunately not copied by their masters ; and he 
adds that, at the conclusion of the sermon, the Jews went to 
congratulate the preacher, though doubtless astonished at the 
bitter attack upon their most deeply rooted prejudices. Be it 
said in honor of Pius IX. that under his Pontificate this cus- 
tom has been abolished, but little importance having been at- 
tached to these pretended conversions of persons who, as re- 
garded their own belief, were greater royalists than the king, 
more papistical than the Pope. And if this custom, so op- 
posed to the religious spirit of the Gospel, ever existed, we 
can not doubt of the existence of other customs, such as 
bringing a Bible to the newly elected Pope, near the Arch of 
Titus, which records the destruction of Jerusalem, and the 
abolition, in 1848, of bringing the tribute of blood, the tribute 
of the stranger, every year on the eve of the Carnival to the 
Roman senators, hearing in exchange some offensive and con- 
temptuous formula. 

Let us try to be guided by strict truth and impartiality. 
The proof that the legislation of the Popes is made up of in- 
comprehensible cruelties is to be seen in the celebrated his- 



THE GHETTO. 2 6i 



tory of the Jewish boy, secretly baptized through the officious- 
ness of a fanatical maid-servant/ torn from that divinely ap- 
pointed authority, the natural and unreplaceable guardianship 
of his father and mother, and shut up in a convent that can 
never be a substitute for home education, and which, being con- 
trary to all the established ideas of right, can not be blessed 
by God. When this boy arrives at maturity, if he has then a 
mother, if he meets her, if he feels in his heart toward her the 
-natural promptings of filial tenderness, and he hears her say 
how much she has suffered from being divided from the ob- 
ject of her sacred affections, from that inseparable part of her 
own being, from the child of her hope and consolation — will 
he not curse and forswear that religion which has made his 
mother shed tears of bitter sorrow? 

After this example, I, for my own part, have no scruple 
about believing similar stories referred to by revolutionary 
authors, and which prove that under the pretense of convert- 
ing to Roman Catholicism the Roman Jews, after the manner 
of the ancient Moors of Spain, they break without remorse 
the most natural authority, such as that of parents ; and 
ignore the strictest duties, such as those of the family, 
not only in the civil sphere, but in the moral sphere, there 
especially where a priestly government should be most scru- 
pulous. 

It is time for all persecutions against opinion to be abol- 
ished. I condemn the Roman Government when it oppresses 
the Jews, and the Government of Prussia when it proscribes 
the Jesuits. T assert that to persecute doctrines is like the 



262 THE GHETTO. 



persecution of light, air, electricity, magnetic fluids \ because 
these escape all persecution, and are placed above all power. 
If I can not conceive the persecution of opinions, still less 
can I comprehend the persecution of associations, when they 
have for a definite object the unfolding of a principle, a sys- 
tem of religion or of government. Ideas by their own worth 
become organized into societies. Both combined form a per- 
fect union like that of soul and body, of light and heat. But 
if I can neither understand the persecution of ideas, nor of 
associations whose object is to explain and divulge them, still 
less can I conceive the persecution of entire races, of human 
families, under the pretext that one act mentioned in the his- 
tory of those races has condemned them through all the suc- 
cession of ages to be accursed. I know all the defects of the 
Jewish people, I know all their unrestrained love of money 
and all their egotism. But their misfortunes more than over- 
balance their errors. And above all they do not deserve the 
oppression which has weighed upon their lives and consciences 
so many ages for having put to death a religious reformer. 
For them the Redeemer was not one alone. In the history of 
humanity there have been many friends and helpers. This 
one has enlightened the conscience, that has instructed the 
reason, the other has saved from labor. And almost all these 
liberators have died before their work, immolated legally or 
illegally by tyrannical sects, by intolerant churches, by bar- 
barous institutions, against which the protest and doctrines of 
innovators have arisen. What people have not brought upon 
themselves some crime similar to that of the Jews in their own 



THE GHETTO. 



263 



eyes ? What great man has not been the victim of the laws, 
or the object of human ingratitude? 

The Greeks sacrificed the revealer of the human conscience; 
the Romans, the tribune of social reform ; the Florentines, the 
precursor of modern revolutions ; the Britons, the prophet of 
religious tolerance \ the French, the Titan of democratic prin- 
ciples; the Spaniards, the discoverer, almost the creator of a 
new world in the immensity of the ocean. The Jews sacrificed 
the Christ. But tell me, how many prophets, how many reform- 
ers have not the Christians sacrificed when they preached 
against their Church as Christ preached against the syna- 
gogue ? how many have attempted to reform or complete the 
law of Christ, as Christ reformed and completed the law of 
Moses ? And for the Saviour, there was the bloody sweat in 
the garden of Gethsemane, the traitor kiss of Judas, the prison 
of shame, and the examination of the tribunal ; the anguish in 
the praetorium ; the sinkings on the cheek, and the blasphe- 
mies cast upon His name ; the way of sorrow where He fell 
three times under His burden ; the nails which wounded His 
hands and the thorns which tore His temples ; the gall and 
vinegar which steeped His lips; the sharp spear which pierced 
His side ; the agony on the cross ; the words, the bitter sup- 
plication, laden with that terrible agony; the death cry, at 
whose echo the graves were rent asunder — these should be 
the eternal epopee of religious liberty ! 

Let there be no more accursed races upon the earth. Let 
every one act according to his conscience, and communicate 
freely with his God. Let thought be only corrected by the 



264 THE GHETTO. 



contradiction of thought. Let error be an infirmity, and not 
a crime. Let us agree in acknowledging that opinions some- 
times take possession of our understandings quite indepen- 
dent of our will or desire. Let us be so just as to be enabled 
to see even to what degree each race has contributed to the 
universal education of humanity. These Israelites, cursed by 
Christian legislatures, are they who have given to us the doc- 
trine of the unity of the Creator — they who have brought 
the decalogue which is stamped on the heart of our families 
and in the sanctuary of our homes — the children of the an- 
cient prophets — the descendants of that David whose Psalms 
we still sing under the roofs of our churches — the subjects 
of that Solomon whose Proverbs constitute the basis of our 
common belief — the redeemed from Egyptian bondage by that 
Moses whom we count among our legislators — those taught 
by Isaiah, by Jeremiah, whom we place among our prophets 
— those who have contributed most to form the essence of 
our ideas and the leaven of our lives. "How much would 
Catholicism gain in this supreme crisis/' said I, while tram- 
pling through the filth of the Ghetto, and seeing in the faces 
of its inhabitants the signs of moral and religious debility, 
"if the Christian conscience would but consider the services 
lent to the education of humanity by all races and by all in- 
stitutions ?" 



Chapter X. 

THE GREAT CITY. 

Naples is now not only the first among Italian cities on 
account of its numerous population and its great dimensions, 
but it is as certainly one of the principal towns in Europe. 
When looked down upon from a height, the eye is scarcely 
aware of that space which separates it from the adjoining vil- 
lages, and then it appears to be as large as London. So 
much was I deceived as to its size, that, comparing my recol- 
lection of the panorama of Paris seen from the Pantheon, and 
of Naples as it appeared from Posilippo, Naples seemed to 
me to be very much greater than Paris, by one of those optic- 
al illusions to which the light and brilliancy of the southern 
sky so much contribute. 

I shall never forget my arrival at the most beautiful capital 
of the ancient Two Sicilies. In a foreign land the smallest 
accident or inconvenience irritates and oppresses. Vexation 
soon becomes pain, and pain grows into suffering as home- 
sickness increases. It appears as if the whole human race 
should abhor you, since you became wearied of your coun- 
try; that all society should renounce you, since you have re- 
nounced the society in which you were born. When you meet 
a citizen who speaks about political subjects in the midst of 

M 



266 THE GREAT CITY. 

his own people — the father of a family who goes into his 
home or walks out with his children — you feel yourself the 
most miserable of mortals, and think your bones are des- 
tined to lie solitary and forgotten among strangers. Above 
all, if the government — if the policy of the nation in which 
you hoped to find a safe asylum — molests you, the heart be- 
comes doubly sad, and you ask yourself the bitter question, 
" If every where I am to be persecuted, why, oh ! why have 
I abandoned my country?" 

While I was in Rome I devoted myself altogether to study 
and meditation. For me the antiquities were alone inter- 
esting in that city, and the works of art rising majestically 
among the ruins. I almost completely avoided society, and 
spent my time in the museums, in the churches, in the Cata- 
combs — in the great world of past ages. Every day I found 
something new among the old, and bound together these dis- 
coveries with history and laws, in the same manner as the 
naturalist confirms his classifications and his varieties with 
the discoveries of new or repeated specimens. I found my- 
self calm and contented in that city where all great sorrow 
can find a refuge, for it can have there a consolation. The 
desolation of the Roman Campagna harmonized w r ell with the 
loneliness of my own soul. The self-forgetfulness which the 
spectacle of so many ruins procured for the lacerated heart 
could not exist, could not be attained in any other city in the 
world. 

How often I thought of detaching myself from the ties 
which bound my life to Paris, as the centre of my banish- 



THE GREAT CITY. 



267 



merit, and of remaining there in silent contemplation of the 
monuments, in intercourse with the arts, in the continuous 
study of history. 

True, neither my philosophical ideas nor my political opin- 
ions would be acceptable to the then ruling power, but what 
could be done against the Government by a poor unfortunate 
without home, without country, without family, without con- 
nections in that society? One, too, who desired to seek for- 
getfulness from his sorrows, and to devote himself to the 
study of dead institutions, buried in the tomb of that vast ne- 
cropolis as sad as my own heart. 

I was thus thinking one lovely spring morning when a wait- 
er from the Hotel Minerva entered hastily into my modest 
apartment, and, without drawing breath or wishing me good- 
day, said to me in a terrified manner — 

"Why did you conceal your rank from me?" 

" My rank ? I had none to conceal ; for I am of no posi- 
tion in the world." 

" Your importance ?" 

"I am not of any consequence." 

"You are a distinguished person." 

"I celebrated ! Bah ! are you mocking me ?" I demanded. 

"I have kept the police from coming to your chamber." 

" The police ?" 

"Yes; the police would have been here before this if I had 
not dissuaded them by saying I would communicate to you 
their order." 

"What order?" 



2 68 THE GREAT CITY. 

" The order to leave Rome immediately." 

" For what reason ?" 

"You have given much reason." 

" But may I not be informed what reason ?" 

" They say that the books written and published by you 
are condemned by the Index." 

" It is true ; but if all the authors whose works are con- 
demned by the Index are forbidden to inhabit this literary 
Rome, truly you will be visited by very few literary people." 

"They say you are a friend of Garibaldi and of Maz- 
zini." 

"It is true." 

"At all events you are very brave." 

"Why?" 

" For coming to Rome with such antecedents." 

" But I ought to assure you that I did not come to Rome 
for any political purpose. You must have noticed that I nei- 
ther make nor receive visits." 

"They say more than that." 

"What do they say?" 

" That you have been condemned to death. 

" For what offense ?" 

" For taking part in a revolution." 

"For being a Liberal — a Democrat." 

" And you know," he said, mysteriously, " the very cordial 
relations existing between the Government of the Cardinals 
of Rome and the Government of the Bourbons of Spain. It 
is to be feared that, you having been sentenced to death 



THE GREAT CITY. 2 6q 

in Spain, the Roman police will arrest you and take you a 
prisoner to Civita Vecchia, then send you on board the mili- 
tary frigate anchored in the bay. There they will hang you." 

"What an opinion you have of this Christian government I" 
I exclaimed, with astonishment. " This danger is altogether 
imaginary.'' 1 

" But the real and great danger you are in at this moment 
is to be imprisoned if you do not leave Rome by the first 
train." 

" Imprisoned ! I have already endured confinement with 
resignation in my own country. The thought that I was 
among my own people, the acknowledgment that I merited 
it as a conspirator, probably softened my troubles. But the 
prison here terrifies me. At what hour does the earliest train 
leave Rome ?" 

"At ten o'clock." 

"What time is it now?" 

"Half-past nine." 

" Where does it go ?" 

"To the south." 

" I am neither ready, nor have I been able to make any 
preparation. But no matter." 

I summoned my traveling companions — a Mexican landed 
proprietor, and two young Spanish gentlemen who were study- 
ing in the College of Bologna, and who were going through 
Italy during the Easter vacation — gave my luggage into their 
keeping, set out in one of those little carriages which do not 
run but fly, arrived at the station, took a ticket, and installed 



27 o THE GREAT CITY. 

myself in a carriage, with the travelers' guide-book in one 
hand and the Roman Journal in the other. 

On setting out the train skirted the Via Appia, and we be- 
held the tomb of Cecilia Metella. These grand monuments 
always inspire me with deep melancholy. An exile, one con- 
demned to death for the crime of professing certain political 
opinions, was it not one more ruin among many ruins — one 
more shadow among so many shadows — one more death 
among so many dead ? No fear or inquietude should be felt 
by that immense power whose name is daily invoked by mill- 
ions of beings at the foot of their altars all around the globe. 
They had driven me not only from my country, but from that 
city which appeared to have the eternal right to be a ref- 
uge. A corpse is never denied a few feet of the earth, but it 
is refused to a living man. To draw my mind from such 
painful reflections, I turned my eyes upon the newspaper and 
saw the following notice : 

" The Pope offered a residence in Rome to the King of Hanover, who 
was dethroned and proscribed ; for Rome is an asylum, an eternal refuge 
for all the unfortunate." 

I smiled bitterly, and seemed to taste gall upon my lips. 
With such sad thoughts I left the city of eternal sadness. 

What a contrast between the Campagna of Naples and the 
Campagna of Rome ! In the one is unity and in the other 
variety ; in this is the sublime and in that the beautiful ; here 
the majesty and there the grace ; in Rome is heard the mel- 
ody of a lament like the harmonious psalmody of the Biblical 



THE GREAT CITY. 



271 



prophets, and in Naples the choir of the ancient Greek di- 
vinities. But if the contrast is great between country and 
country, how much greater it is between city and city. Let 
the sworn enemies of Pontifical Rome say what they will, it 
appeared to me, when compared with Naples, a severe — a 
most severe city. At least there reigns in Rome sadness and 
silence. Its inhabitants seem to look upon darkness. Their 
faces have a certain solemn sadness, like that of a sovereign 
but a dethroned race. The innumerable convents, the mul- 
titudes of monks, the chapels which arise on all sides, t}ie 
statues which ornament the corners of the streets, all show 
that the Romans are a people submissive to theocracy ; while 
the cries in the streets of Naples, the continual vociferations, 
the gay groups standing around, the universal gayety, the 
dances on one side, the open-air concerts on the other, the 
concourse of people to the water-stalls and cafes, show you 
are in a civil city where life is a continual festival. And 
there is no longer the same number of religious pictures as 
formerly. For the image of the Saviour they have substituted 
the portrait of Garibaldi. To worship is a necessity for the 
Neapolitans — to worship fervently whatever be the object of 
their adoration ; to worship devotedly among blows and out- 
cries, with huzzas and shouting, with all the exaltation com- 
mon to highly nervous temperaments, and with the fanaticism 
which accompanies the excitement of southern passions kin- 
dled by the intense heat of the climate. There is something 
of Vesuvius — something of its burning fires, something of 
its eruptions, something also of its changeableness — in the 



272 THE GREAT CITY. 

fickle and ardent nature of the Neapolitans — of those degen- 
erate Greeks who dwell, always with a smile upon their lips, 
upon the borders of death — threatened by their volcano with 
a doom similar to that which buried the cities of Pompeii 
and Herculaneum. 

Many times when strolling through the streets of the great 
cities of Northern Europe, and observing the silence and grav- 
ity of the people, I have thought of the effect which would be 
produced by so vast a population as that of London, or even 
of Paris, were these capitals situated in the south of Europe. 
What a stormy sea would all these people make under one 
sky ! What an uproar would arise in the streets ! A town 
of the south is like a grove of the tropics whither the people 
resort for recreation. There is a life and gayety about them 
that you would seek in vain among the fogs of London or 
Paris. From the heights of Montmartre or from the cemetery 
of Pere la Chaise, I have never heard at the fall of day the 
same noises I have heard at the same hour from the gardens 
of the Retiro. One could fancy Madrid a larger town than 
Paris. But, when compared with Seville and Valencia, Mad- 
rid is a silent city. What nights those are in Seville ! The 
children play and shout \ the young men sing and touch the 
guitar; families, seated at their ease, listen to the piano in the 
open air of their patios, among bright flowers, aromatic plants, 
and jets of murmuring water. What days are those of the 
festivals in Valencia — above all, those of summer ! The ring- 
ing of the bells, the music in the streets, tambourines and 
trumpets keeping time to the dances, the fire-works exploding 



THE GREAT CITY. 



273 



like little cannons, the interminable row of small petards 
upon the ground, and the sky-rockets flying through the glow- 
ing air ! 

Well, then, I tell you that Seville and Valencia are quiet 
towns compared with Naples. True, Naples contains six 
hundred thousand inhabitants. But the difference does not 
arise from the greater population. No ! Our southern tem- 
perament is restrained by our Spanish gravity. There is even 
in more southern Spanish towns something of the abstraction 
and of the religious silence of the Moors. Neither the An- 
dalusians nor the Valencians throw up their hands, gesticu- 
late, or shout like the people of Naples. Even our peasant- 
ry, in the midst of their chatter and their festivals, have all 
the Spanish dignity. The Neapolitans are noisy and loqua- 
cious as Greeks. What confusion in the town ! How much 
more suitable to the state of my feelings was Rome, with all 
her melancholy sublimity; the Miserere of Palestrina, the walk 
along the Via Appia, bordered with monuments, the contin- 
ual contemplation of the desolate Campagna, the philosoph- 
ical meditations over the weather-beaten stones, among the 
ruins of the Coliseum, under the shadow of the Cross. 

Those who are fond of clamor and bustle throng to Naples. 
The foot-paths all support a traffic. Upon all these are little 
shops and movable stalls, sometimes sleeping people, as mo- 
tionless as corpses. A thousand small organs, harps, and vio- 
lins distract the ears. Crowds of puppet-players, rope-dancers, 
and conjurers, with their corresponding circles of wonder- 
struck admirers, throng the thoroughfares and embarrass the 

M 2 



2 74 THE GREAT CITY. 

movements of passengers. The workmen sing or dispute 
with each other in loud voices. 

The idle, when they have no one to speak to, talk noisily 
to themselves. The coachmen or cart-drivers who pass vo- 
ciferate energetically, dashing along in all directions and 
throwing up clouds of dust. Every mule wears hundreds of 
buttons and little jingling bells. The carriages creak as if 
creaking was the object of their construction. The sellers of 
newspapers, and in general all itinerant traders, shout in the 
most astonishing manner. Every tradesman at the door of 
his shop, or over his stall, makes a pompous oral programme 
of his rich merchandise, begging every stranger to purchase. 
The seller of scapularies, without knowing any thing of your 
country or religion, fixes his amulet on your neck ; while the 
shoe-black, no matter whether your boots are dim or shining, 
rubs them over with his varnish, with or without your consent. 
The flower-seller, who carries bundles of roses and orange 
blossoms, adorns your hat, your button-holes, your pockets, 
without ever asking your permission. The lemonade-maker 
comes out with a flowing glass which he places at your lips. 
Scarcely have you freed yourself from his importunity when 
another tormentor approaches with a pan of hot cakes, fried 
in oil, which he asks you to eat whether you will or no. The 
children, accustomed to mendicity, although their plumpness 
and good-humor are indicative of proper feeding, seize you 
by the knees, and will not allow you to advance till you have 
given them some money. The fisherman draws near with a 
costume the color of sea-weed, barefooted, his trowsers tucked 



THE GREAT CITY. 



275 



up and exposing his brown legs, his head covered with a red 
cap, his blue shirt unbuttoned, opening oysters and other 
shell-fish, and presenting them to you as if by your orders. 
The cicerone goes before and displays his eloquence, inter- 
larded with innumerable phrases in all languages, and full of 
anachronisms and falsehoods, historical and artistic. If you 
dismiss him, if you say his services are useless, he will talk 
of the peril you are in of losing your purse or your life from 
not having listened to his counsels or been attentive to his 
astonishing knowledge. Do not fancy you can get out of all 
this by being in a carriage. I have never seen people jump 
upon carriages more quickly, or stand upon the step, or fol- 
low clinging to the back, or to any part, regardless of your 
displeasure. But if you have the air of a newly arrived trav- 
eler, they will not annoy you with their wares, but will force 
you to engage a carriage of their choosing. In half a second 
you are surrounded with vehicles, which encompass you like 
serpents at the risk of crushing you, whose drivers speak all 
at once a distracting and frightful jargon, offering to take you 
to Posilippo, to Baiae, to Pozzuoli, to Castellamare, to Sorren- 
to, to Cumae, to the end of Creation. 

The Sundays are enough to cause a vertigo. All the in- 
habitants of Naples appear without exception to have be- 
come insane. I have never any where seen such a bustle. 
I have never heard such a noisy bell-ringing, and should not 
like to return again in the midst of such continual uproar. 
In proportion to its size no city in Europe contains so many 
carriages as Naples. It is the custom for private carriages 



276 



THE GREAT CITY. 



to go along the foot of the beautiful hills of the environs to 
enter by Posilippo on the Riviera di Chiaja. It is impossible 
to imagine more luxury or a greater number of elegant equi- 
pages. To the numerous carriages of the Neapolitan aristoc- 
racy are added those of many wealthy strangers, who are in 
the habit of visiting the city, and of remaining there during 
the months of spring and winter. But the carriage the visitor 
to Naples should see and hear is that used by the people on 
Sundays. It is the ancient calesa of Madrid, but rather light- 
er. The horses are thin, but are showily caparisoned. Rib- 
bons, laces, flowers, tricolor flags, tinkling bells and orna- 
ments, decorations embroidered with wool or bright-colored 
silks, even great squares of gauze are used to beautify them. 
They have always more than one coachman, generally two or 
three, who jump about like acrobats in the circus. In the 
carriage, on the coach-box, on the steps there are passengers; 
some ride on the old pony, cling to the stirrups or on the 
foot-board, balancing themselves in perilous positions, often 
more than twenty at a time — all shout and all move as if they 
were dancing. After watching several of these pass by, and 
being stunned by the fearful clamor, you feel giddy, the head 
swims, and the ears retain the sounds, as if you had been 
spinning like a peg-top in some infernal waltz. 

Beware of entering one of those carriages, though you 
should hire it for your own party only. Any one who crosses 
your route and feels fatigued or desires to travel that way, 
jumps upon the vehicle as if it was his own property, takes 
possession of it, and goes on with his gymnastic exercises at 



THE GREAT CITY. 277 

your elbow, but without giving you trouble or annoyance 
further than that of his company, paying you many compli- 
ments, and friendly as if he had been acquainted with you all 
his life. The ascent of Vesuvius is made fearful with such 
people. If you have no guide you may reckon upon their 
sarcasms, on their snares, whistling, and insults ; no one will 
point out your path or warn you of a false step. I shall never 
forget a poor Englishman without a guide whom I met near 
the crater. He attracted all eyes. But when you have a 
guide you become merely a machine. They give you a pony 
that will neither stop nor go on at your pleasure. Arrived at 
a certain point, four or five men take possession of each of 
your party : one fixes a cord about your waist, another seizes 
your right arm, a third holds you on the left, some begin to 
remove the stones from your path, or drag your body after 
them like a burden, upsetting you while seeming to give you 
support, till they have taken you to the top of the volcano. 
Then, after a short repose, they dwell upon the risk you run 
of dying like Pliny, drag you in giddy haste from the crater, 
on one side all covered with ashes, like a soul brought by the 
devil to the infernal regions. And all this after the establish- 
ment of constitutional laws, after the introduction of modern 
ideas and with them modern customs, after the disappearance 
of those traditionary lazzaroni who lived almost naked upon 
the sand, existing in the sun upon a little fishing and a great 
deal of charity. 

The impression that the Neapolitan population does not 
labor appears to me extremely false. They shout, they sing, 



278 



THE GREAT CITY. 



they gesticulate, they vociferate, they dispute, but they labor, 
and they labor with much toil and with little profit. There 
are poets in the midst of that dazzling light, under the influ- 
ence of that enchanting nature, educated by the glorious 
beauty of the varied landscapes, supported and encouraged 
by the approval of their fellow-citizens, like lawful sons of the 
Greek Parthenope. There are many poets without culture, 
who improvise verses spontaneous as the flowers of the grove 
or the forest ; many orators, who speak with inimitable elo- 
quence of sentiment and of passion. Strength does not be- 
come exhausted in this eternal spring; the senses are not 
wasted in this life of emotions. The people are temperate as 
the ancient Greeks : a handful of figs, some slices of melon, a 
few cucumbers, tomatoes, and raw capsicums, with cockles 
from the bay, form the chief part of their nourishment. I 
know not if there is any truth in the observation of an English 
writer who laments that potatoes have diminished the intelli- 
gence of southern peoples by making them lymphatic. I re- 
member in my own family an old servant who died some time 
ago under our roof at the age of ninety, and who would never 
eat potatoes. Our Englishman would have given her a prize, 
for he says that this vegetable is not like peas or beans, which 
contain phosphorus, and are therefore fitted to assist the un- 
folding of cerebral development, and that these should be re- 
stored as in the time of Pythagoras, who valued beans and 
recommended them as almost a religious nutriment. I can 
affirm that the people of Naples are remarkable for sobriety, 
and are not in any way addicted to wine or strong liquors. 



THE GREAT CITY. 2 yg 

If snow or fresh water should ever fail them, there would be a 
revolution in Naples. In this temperance they resemble their 
ancestors, the ancient Greeks ; one of the finest Pindaric odes 
has a beautiful lyrical introduction consecrated to water. 

Another analogy of the Neapolitans to the ancient Greeks 
is their love of living in the open air. The pearl is not joined 
to its shell, the spirit united to its organism, the artistic idea 
to its form, so completely as the Neapolitan is bound to his 
city. He rarely emigrates ; for it is a necessity to live near 
that bay, on those lovely shores, under those smiling heavens, 
by the music of that sea, even under the threatenings of Ve- 
suvius. The day that the volcano should again become ex- 
tinct, as it was in the times of the Roman Republic, Naples 
would think something was wanting in her existence. Its 
dull roar in her ears, its frequent eruptions before her eyes, 
the white cloud of smoke in the sky, the reflection of the gi- 
gantic torch in those crystalline waters — man and nature har- 
monize and mingle in embraces. 

There is a great deal of misery in Naples, and there are 
many poor in the city. But the poverty of Naples does not 
occasion the same wretchedness as the poverty of London. 
A poor person in London wears worn-out, patched, and soiled 
clothes, cast aside by one of the higher classes ; a poor per- 
son in Naples, if he wears but little clothes, requires but little 
— he is warmed by that balmy air and bronzed by that life- 
giving sun. The poor of London must have spirituous drinks, 
animal food, coals to warm their habitations. The lower 
classes in Naples live upon the fruits of the field and on the 



280 THE GREAT CITY. 



fish of the sea — an easy and sober fare. To the poor of the 
great northern city all the public spectacles are closed — the 
aristocratic club, the theatre, the balls and routs of the nobili- 
ty, the expansion of mind which comes from looking upon ex- 
tended landscapes ; while nothing can shut out from the poor 
of the South the continual festival presented by his beautiful 
country, the sight of the Apennines, the eruptions of Vesuvius, 
the chain of volcanic hills which encompass the city like a 
girdle of black diamonds, the florid and luxuriant vegetation, 
the celestial waters, the starry firmament, the melody of the 
waves upon the shores, the islets which raise their heads among 
the azure and fleecy clouds of the divine Mediterranean. 

One thing in particular I noted in London and Naples. 
Liberty is more deeply rooted in England than in any other 
country, and yet there is no other country where the social 
classes are so sharply defined and are separated by such a 
profound abyss. When you see one of those omnibus-drivers 
sitting with so much solemnity on his coach-box, you appear 
to see in the gravity of his air, in the majesty of his counte- 
nance, the first of senators seated on his wool-sack, presiding 
over that high chamber which only had equal or resemblance 
in ancient Rome. And, notwithstanding, if physiology, if na- 
ture has not made differences between aristocrats and plebe- 
ians, how much, how vast are the differences made by the 
laws ! On the other hand, the Neapolitan plebeian is a ple- 
beian in the broadest signification of the word — a plebeian by 
his origin, a plebeian by his nature, a plebeian by his habits ; 
and, notwithstanding, he imposes his will, his opinion, upon the 



THE GREAT CITY. 2 8i 

aristocracy, with which he is mingled, by a happy mixture of 
lightness, of grace, and of personal dignity, born of the innate 
consciousness that whatever may be the nature or position of 
a man, whatever be his calling, he is sufficient for himself. 

Is there any modern people who keep up a drama for itself 
alone ? That intuition of the people in the fifteenth and six- 
teenth centuries which erected for themselves a theatre, and 
infused into it their ideas and sentiments, no longer exists in 
Europe. The Spanish drama was born, like that of Greece, 
in a cart which went from fair to fair, from festival to festival, 
followed by the people — a cart sacred as that of Thespis, over 
which floated the genius of the people. Little by little, after 
the death of Lopes, as soon as the supernatural lightnings of 
the minds of Shakespeare and Calderon were extinguished, the 
theatre ceased to be used for religious performances, the popu- 
lar pieces were abandoned, and the drama became the vehicle 
for academical laws, the pleasant pastime of the lettered aris- 
tocracy. Till the war of the classical and the romantic, in 
which they pretended to represent the spirit of the people, 
that spirit which engendered the Homeric poems and ro- 
mances, they did not touch the lower classes, who never even 
appeared in pamphlets or reviews. But Naples has her own 
stage — a stage whereon she has employed herself in all times, 
even those most stormy, in bitterly censuring the customs and 
at times the politics of the day. 

It is true that this theatre can not hold any literary charac- 
ter, the pieces being written and performed in the local dia- 
lect, made up of a mixture of Latin and of the language of the 



282 THE GREAT CITY. 

country. A labor of six centuries carried on by men of the 
highest talent, without giving to dialects the absolute perfec- 
tion of Latin, has shown that they possess much literary in- 
terest, and converted some into classic languages. This poor 
Neapolitan dialect, alas ! can never aspire to so much ! The 
chief personage of the Naples stage is always Polichinello, 
brother of the Pasquina of Rome. But still in its modest 
humility it shows that there is love of literature, a love of life 
and dramatic action in the people who support it, and who 
enjoy its pointed and sarcastic allusions, sometimes truly like 
those of Aristophanes. When I went to see a performance at 
this theatre, they bitterly criticised those patriots who lounge 
from seat to seat in the Roman cafes, lazily sipping lemonade, 
but do nothing for Rome or Italy, either in the electoral coun- 
cils or in the field of battle. Politics only supported by illu- 
sions are worth little ; but the drama throws light on the popu- 
lar manners, and the relation of those manners, and the pas- 
sion of passions — love. At all events it was curious and in- 
teresting to follow the ecstatic anxiety with which the people 
beheld their own imaginations reflected in the drama. 

Both in the little theatre of the people and in the great 
theatre of San Carlo, one of the largest and most beautiful in 
the world, I observed the profound interest taken by the public 
in theatrical representations. Their nervous temperaments 
burst forth at every moment in tumultuous manifestations, ei- 
ther of censure or applause. The public becomes at the thea- 
tre a real actor. Its voice, and if not its voice, its accent, its 
murmur, accompanies the performers as the blue waves of 



THE GREAT CITY. 



283 



the Piraeus accompanied the choir of Grecian tragedy. When 
they are pleased, the applause reaches delirium, and the ex- 
pression of disapprobation is absolutely pitiless. An actress 
would think herself despised and neglected if her ears were 
not saluted with a tempest of approval, or if she was not near- 
ly buried under showers of bouquets. During the entire per- 
formance the excitement and curiosity of the people are ex- 
treme. They are never indifferent. They are a people who 
love or hate. The dawn of criticism rather spoils their frank, 
artistic nature. They feel acutely, and sing with taste and ex- 
pression — putting their whole hearts into a romance of Bellini, 
a melody of Cimarosa, an air of Passiello. There is in their 
accent some echo of the Greek songs which the mariners 
chant in the Isle of Capri, at the Cape of Sorrento, at the foot 
of Vesuvius. As in the serenades of Schubert and of Mozart 
there is something of the music of Andalusia, so in the An- 
dalusian song there is something of the sublime accent of the 
Moorish cadence, accompanied by the breeze of the desert. 

But notwithstanding this, in my observations of the city 
which the Greeks call Siren, there is something which disgusts 
me — the excess of noisy gayety in conversation, the excess of 
movement in their gestures, the excess of giddiness in their 
dances, the excess of accompaniments of the most discordant 
instruments in their songs and their tarantelles. And often, 
wearied of so much commotion, I ascended the hill of the 
Carthusians to look upon the heavens and the Mediterranean, 
and to reflect that the varieties of peoples and of races are 
lost in the immensity of the infinite. 



Chapter XL 

* PARTHENOPE. 

A southern town can not have for us Spaniards, and par- 
ticularly for Spaniards of the South, the novelty it possesses for 
the French, the Germans — especially for the French and Ger- 
mans of the North. We have towns which for the clearness 
of their skies, the brilliancy of their light, the loveliness of 
their fields and suburbs, the beauty of their women, the in- 
genuity of their citizens, the art of their monuments, and the 
purity of their atmosphere, bear comparison with the richest 
and finest Italian cities. Who can forget Valencia, begirt 
>*vith its Moorish and Gothic towers, reclining gently on the 
banks of the limpid river, which in its course fertilizes the ad- 
jacent plains, encircled by the fertile orchards which interlace 
with the bright branches of the mulberry the dark boughs of 
the pomegranate ; while at the foot of the palms, softly waved 
by the sea-breeze, innumerable orange-trees delight the eyes 
with the golden harvest of their fruit, and the air is fragrant 
with the scent of their white blossoms ? Who could weary of 
admiring the oriental Cordova, with its Mesquita, unique in 
Europe, where are heard the echoes of Moorish poetry, at the 
foot of that Sierra Morena, enameled with groves of roses ? 
There is not in the world another Seville, when her luxuriant 



PARTHENOPE. 285 



plains are caressed by the spring zephyrs. See the city in 
April, rising above the sea of tender green, her spires, her but- 
tresses, her arched windows, her towers, under a sky of re- 
splendent light, the air laden with the echoes of oriental mel- 
ody and the intoxicating essences of flowers ! The eyes never 
tire of looking at and admiring Cadiz — her white buildings, 
adorned with green balconies; her fine windows and crystal- 
line inclosures. where float curtains of gay colors ; flat roofs 
with turrets of florid hues, some erected among the rocks 
where the waves dash and break in foamy cataracts, surround- 
ed by vessels which leave clouds of vapor in the pure air, 
and ride gracefully with their swelling sails and picturesque 
banners ; the dark and massive wall on one side of the bay, 
with its white houses, its aqueducts and pyramids of salt, 
sparkling in the glorious light; its distant chain of mountains 
surmounted by rolling clouds, now violet, now crimson, ac- 
cording to the hour and the rosy shades of the ambient air; 
while on the other side the azure sea expands, retracing in its 
bright waters all the tints of the heavens ; all together com- 
posing, with its winds, its waves, its breezes, its currents, its 
tempests, and its terrors, a continual canticle to the Infinite. 

In the midst of the most smiling towns of Italy I always 
remembered our own beautiful Granada : the mountains with 
their snowy peaks, the extinct volcanoes with their pyramids 
of lava ; the extensive plain all covered with a green carpet 
of rich vegetation, and bounded in the distance by the hills of 
Loja; the hoary Albaicin in the background, girded with aloes 
and Indian fig-trees, as if still awaiting the sons of Africa and 



2 86 PARTHENOPE. 

of Asia, and still repeating the melancholy song inspired by 
the desert; the sacred mount crowned with pines; the con- 
fluence of the rivers Darro and Genii, which divide the gar- 
dens and refresh the groves of almond-trees, filberts, and cacti ; 
in the centre the Alhambra, its towers bronzed by the sun of 
ages ; above the eminence with its woods of tender green, at 
whose base sleeps Granada, and on the summit of which 
stands — outlined against the sky with all the beauty of orient- 
al poetry — the minarets and the arched windows and the red 
towers of the Generalife, half hidden among grottoes and mur- 
muring cascades, fragrant jasmine, melancholy cypresses, and 
flowering shrubs, whose whispers and odors invite to the joys 
of Moorish life, consecrated, after war and religion, to sleep, 
to love and poetry. 

We have laurels to crown poets; we have myrtle-groves 
worthy to be habitations for the gods of antiquity ; palm-trees 
under whose broad leaves the genius of Asia seems to wan- 
der; coasts of golden sand and of celestial waters; bays and 
promontories which the setting sun gilds and variegates like 
the classic shores of Greece ; the air perfumed with orange- 
flowers and jasmine; figs luscious as those of Athens in our 
orchards ; grapes as sweet as those of Corinth in our vine- 
yards ; warm days when is heard the chirp of the grasshopper, 
which delighted the ancient poets like the harmony of soft 
music ; nights clear and tranquil, like those of the East ; sere- 
nades in whose plaintive cadence is heard again the immortal 
accents of Moorish poetry, with all their intensity of love and 
all their profound melancholy. 



PARTHENOPE. 287 



But though I have seen all this, I was much struck with the 
wondrous beauty of the Campagna of Naples. There may be 
something wilder, more sublime, or grander on the earth ; 
there can be nothing more classic, more worthy of the antique 
eclogue, more suitable for the refreshment of the soul which 
takes its tints and inspirations from nature. Thus, as sculp- 
ture is pre-eminently the Pagan art, the art which harmonizes 
and forms conceptions in dignified repose, the Campagna is 
the land of the eclogues and the Georgics, the pastoral coun- 
try in which the monks repeat the undying echo of the soft 
flute of Virgil, and plants and animals are transformed in the 
vision of our thoughts with the metamorphosis sung by Ovid. 

Good heavens! What richness of shades, of tones, of col- 
ors ! What gradations from the clear azure of the bay to the 
violet and deep amethyst of Vesuvius ! How the mountain- 
chains toward the east, adorned here and there with glaciers 
which sparkle like diamonds between emeralds and turquois- 
es, contrast with the rosy tints assumed at sunset by the hills 
of the west, by the headland of Miseno and around the island 
of Nisida, like promontories of burnished jasper! Behold 
that pure horizon and those columns of white smoke escap- 
ing from the volcano ; that sea varying with the clouds, their 
repetition and their mirror ; that soil with its black and shin- 
ing lava, between whose jetty blocks shoots up the luxuriant 
vegetation ! I have never any where seen the light break 
into such varied refractions, or present such rapid changes of 
color. I have never beheld in any other country contrasts 
more remarkable than these abrupt descents to smooth 



288 PARTHENOPE. 



sands ; the wildest groves beside the most cultivated gar- 
dens ; towns thickly populated and solitary ruins ; a land 
now threatened with death by the volcanic streams and the 
caves of burning sulphur, by sudden earthquakes, by violent 
eruptions ; nor life more gay and joyous, which delights it- 
self in the song, in the dance, in games and pleasures \ re- 
finements of civilization, mingled with the repose of the coun- 
try, old memories wandering over the indolent modern forget- 
fulness; the column of fire which the volcano shoots forth like 
a gigantic torch lighting up the summits of the snow-topped 
mountains. 

Here I saw beech-trees and the oaks of Virgil ; goats wan- 
dering on the heights and browsing among the shrubs ; sheep 
with their rich fleeces of wool and their udders filled with 
milk, followed by their tender bleating lambs ; brambles on 
the steeps, with whose berries shepherds tinge their cheeks 
and eyebrows when chanting their bucolic verses ; on the 
banks of the stream the reeds with which the god Pan formed 
his flageolets; festoons of vines between the stately elm-trees, 
whose foliage shelters the wood-pigeon, and whence is heard 
the coo of the turtle-dove, beneath the flowering lavender ; 
upon the hills there are the sweet-scented thyme and the 
hyacinth ; at the entrance of the cavern, in the trunk of the 
evergreen oak which stretches across, is the honeycomb, with 
the wild bees buzzing around and extracting the luscious es- 
sence from the flowers. Within the cavern reposes Silenus, 
intoxicated with life and wine, in his hand his amphora, and 
his garland on his brow ; by the flowing streams the white 



PARTHENOPE. 



289 



naiads weave their crowns; by the sheepcot on the height the 
young shepherd twines the wild rose and the narcissus, the 
white lily and the honeysuckle, to offer them to his beloved ; 
in the broad sea, rippled by the breeze and variegated by 
the changing light, there is the antique siren among the 
waves, singing eternally her seducing chant of love and mel- 
ancholy, the undying poem of nature. 

Besides these eclogues, what terrible tragedies are present- 
ed by this tormented country ! The ancients did well in call- 
ing her the siren who attracts and the siren who destroys. 
Frequent and awful volcanic eruptions have burned and bur- 
ied entire towns and villages. Shocks of earthquake spread 
terror and desolation over the whole region. The buildings 
balance themselves like ships upon the waves in a tempest, 
and then come clouds of hot and stifling vapors, rains, show- 
ers of ashes, fearful hail-storms, floods of lava. The sea boils 
and foams, the heavens shoot forth their dreadful fires, as if 
the beneficent rain-clouds had turned to burning ovens. The 
volcano gasps like a Cyclopean forge, or lightens and thun- 
ders its eruptions like a legion of tempests. On all sides 
volumes of red-hot lava, rain of black ashes, whirlwinds fling- 
ing upward stones and pieces of rocks, the horrible roaring 
of the mountain, the terror and despair of the valley, sulphur- 
ous smoke, exhalations of poisonous gas, dark and angry 
clouds crossed by reflections of the flames and filled with 
little aerolites, a border of scoriae below the crater, and 
streams of boiling water • the infernal regions blended with 
the earthly paradise, as pain and pleasure in the soul of man, 

N 



290 



PARTHENOPB. 



as error and truth in his mind — a faithful copy of the great 
drama of our existence, of the strange contrasts of our being. 

The burning mountain is a gigantic laboratory, from which 
issues with equal power death and life, as nature is a combi- 
nation of forces which compose, decompose, and recompose. 
Of its extremes, its convulsive tragedies, the ancient dwellers 
in Pompeii and Stabia might complain ; the modern peasant 
of Resina and Torre del Greco, who in our sad days sees his 
vines, laden with the celebrated sweet juice of Lacryma 
Christi, disappear under the burning bituminous flood. But 
the chemist, the physiologist, discover something fruitful in 
these exhalations — soda, potash, and divers kinds of mineral 
salts, a testimony of communication with the Mediterranean ; 
deposits of iron, with all the colors of precious gems and of 
wild flowers ; streams of chloric acid and of sulphuric acid; 
ammoniacal substances and pieces of sulphur on the dark 
scoriae; deposits of thermal waters which cure many dis- 
eases ; and continual exhalations of the gas azote and of 
carbonic acid, so fatal to life and so precious to science. 

Without having seen the w T onderful contrast between the 
smiling serenity of the fields and the sinister aspect of the 
volcano, it is impossible to form an adequate idea of its ef- 
fect. When imagination wanders over those sylvan scenes, 
and the eye looks with delight upon those classic shores, 
passing from the hill to the vale, and from the vale to the 
grove, from the grove where interlace the olive and lemon 
trees to the celestial sea, where, like flocks of white birds, 
curl those beautiful lateen sails used in the Mediterranean, 



PARTHENOPE. 291 



you almost believe you behold the shepherds of Virgil, the 
mariners of Theocritus, singing — the former among their 
sheepfolds and meadows, the latter among their net3 and ves- 
sels — verses which are repeated by the waves and the breezes. 
But afterward look at the volcano \ behold its awful flames 
and its torrent of fiery lava, hear it roar and thunder, believe 
that its heights outline among clouds of smoke the legions 
which now tread those high summits, the legions of the eter- 
nal victim, of the immortal outcast, of Spartacus, the noble 
defender of slaves, whose blood-stained and tragic shade 
overhangs those scenes as did the infamy of slavery all the 
beauty and harmony of the ancient world. 

What excess of cultivation in life and of originality in na- 
ture ! Here there were placed four or five distinct civiliza- 
tions one above the other, from the Pelasgic to the Chris- 
tian ; and the volcanic soil, in its peculiarities, in its convul- 
sions, in its vapors, seems to belong to the time in which the 
planet was still incandescent matter, filled with intense heat 
and thundering electricity. I can fancy myself in the caverns 
where the archetypical ideas — the mother ideas, as Goethe 
calls them — wove the web of life, or where the fabulous giants 
formed in colossal forges the immovable granite bases of the 
earth. This spot has always been Pagan. The holy water 
falling for fifteen centuries upon the fields has not yet bap- 
tized them. The gods of antiquity refuse to depart. In vain 
the aged sibyl of Cumae, her vision dimmed with gazing into 
futurity, her tunic rent in sorrow, from the elevated point where 
she lingers, says to the children of Naples when they cast 



292 PAR THE NOPE. 



stones at her and ask, "What do you desire?" "I want to 
die." In vain the sirens have gathered round the Cape Mi- 
seno to lament the death of the god Pan. Here are still all 
the divinities — the same Ceres crowned with wheat-ears, and 
Bacchus girded with vine-leaves ; Minerva with her olive- 
branch, and Silenus leaning on his cypress ; Neptune with his 
sharp trident urging his foaming horses to the earth ; and Vul- 
can reddening the iron in the profound abyss of his eternal 
forge. They have not been here — no, they are here, on the 
very ground, in the sculptured rock-bound headlands, in the 
fastnesses of the mountains, in the shadows of the coasts, in 
the living light which admits not of mystery and shows the 
meeting of the golden angles, to celebrate the nuptials of the 
spirit with nature, as in the times of ancient Paganism. 

These lands, pre-eminently graceful and beautiful, attract 
the natives of all climes and races ; they are the channel of 
perpetual communication among all men. They remain for 
the rustics of the soil, to preserve behind the defiles of their 
mountain chains, in the bosoms of the caverns, veiled by im- 
penetrable forests, on heights only accessible to eagles, their 
safeguard being the danger of the marble rocks suspended 
over the valley ; they remain for the wars of independence, the 
savage worship of ancient laws and ancient institutions. Here 
among those transparent waves, where the reflections of glori- 
ous light represent lakes and rivers, each of whose drops is a 
star ; where phosphoric splendor, white as the soft rays of 
moonlight, leaves shining tracts in the calm nights of sum-mer, 
like the path of the Milky Way in the heavens ; here where the 



PAR THE NOPE. 293" 



lovely shores are seducing as maiden beauty ; where every 
tree exhales a delicious aroma, and every movement of the air 
is like a low sigh of love ; upon the grass or over the waves, 
among the flowers of the field and the sea-shells on the strand, 
in the shade of the myrtle and the olive and the swelling sail 
— come the gods of all the temples, the pilots of all races, the 
conquerors of all towns, to live even for a moment, intoxicated 
with pride and pleasure in the arms of enchanting and volup- 
tuous nature. 

The same happens among ourselves. The Catalonian sees 
over again the Roman invasion a hundred times in his leath- 
ern buckler; the Asturian, without having the culture of 
Brutus or Cato, without hoping that Plutarch will relate and 
Lucian sing his achievements, prefers death to serfdom; the 
Navarrine from the high mountains will think over the old 
conquests of his people, and again make the soldiers of Charle- 
magne bite the dust; the Biscayan preserves, through so many 
revolutions and so many ages, laws and usages which have 
patriarchal characters, and ancient and purely primitive lan- 
guage, like the smooth and smiling beach of the Mediterra- 
nean, accessible to all vessels and nations, with its azure waves 
and its silvery foam, its golden sands and its graceful slopes, its 
olives, its myrtles, and its laurels ; tinted by that dazzling light 
whose reflections give to the mountain chains their metallic 
touches, and to the East and the West those rosy clouds of 
indescribable beauty, to the stars and the wake of vessels their 
scintillation; while the air is fragrant with the intoxicating 
breath of flowers and balmy with the soft breeze of summer ; 



294 



PARTHENOPE. 



and people from all ends of the earth, vessels from all parts, 
come to her shores, which open and give themselves up of 
free will, or force, now to the sword, now to persuasion. 

Thus it is in the history of the Spanish peninsula, as m the 
Italian peninsula, the northern cities form a nationality, and 
those of the south make it illustrious. The mountains of the 
north will be historic regions, the Conservative regions — if it 
is permitted so to speak; the southern shores will be the Lib- 
eral regions — the regions, so to speak, humanitarian. The 
one will give the people its proper and peculiar character, the 
second will succeed in bringing the people into communica- 
tion with the other nations of the earth. The rude and vig- 
orous Italians of the north, realizing the dream of fifteen cent- 
uries, sustain the independence of united Italy, as the inhab- 
itants of the mountains of Covadonga, of San Juan de la Pefia, 
of the steep and rocky Sobrarbe, descend to the plains with 
the impetuosity of their rivers to form the Iberian nationality. 
And as by Rosas, by Sagunto, by Denia, by Tarragona, by 
Calpe, by Algeciras, by Cadiz, came the Greeks, the Phoeni- 
cians, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Moors, by the south- 
ern shores of Italy came almost all the invaders, from those 
who founded Magna Grecia in the Strait of Messina and in 
the Gulf of Tarento, to those who founded the Spanish mon- 
archy in the plains of Etna and Vesuvius. 

And in Naples all that exists of modern life recalls Spain 
— our Spain ; so that we almost believe we are in Barcelona, 
in Valencia, or even in Madrid, when we see lattices and 
balconies, and the houses painted of different colors, and the 



PARTHENOPE. 2 9S 

monuments of the age of Alphonso V., or of Carlos III., so 
much of all that antique life which is to us more familiar 
— much more than the Italy civilized by the arms of Rome, 
the Italy civilized by the word of Greece. 

Parthenope is Grecian — completely, absolutely Grecian. 
There the eternal harmony between the soul of man and the 
universe which surrounds him will never be broken or dis- 
solved — true secret of the excellence of the Hellenic life not 
told in history. Naples appears to float in the ether of 
which Euripides sung, and to be filled with the choirs of the 
Muses and the melodies of Apollo ; the waters have raised 
above their shining surface the golden ships in which went 
the processions or Greek theories celebrated in the Banquet 
of Plato; the isles seem to retain on their marble brows, like 
the antique Cytherea, the kiss of the goddess new-born in 
the snowy foam of the waves ; those coasts, outlined as if by 
a compass, and those mountains, in harmonious proportions 
with all their surroundings, preserve the rhythm and the ge- 
ometry of Euclid and Pythagoras \ the Mediterranean is calm- 
ly sleeping there, not only to repeat all the shades of the 
luminous heavens, but to sport with the nymphs, with the 
sirens, with the divinities, whose temples, crowned with sea- 
weed, with pearls and corals, are seen at each moment in the 
rays of sunlight on the variegated sands, within the transpa- 
rent sea borders. And man is upon that earth, under that 
heaven, like the antique god on the sacred stone of his altar 
and under the roof of his temple ; there nature is clear, 
transparent in relief, like that ancient classic conscience — 



296 PARTHENOPE. 



like that Hellenic language, the most distinct and precise, 
the richest and most harmonious of all human languages ; 
there all these are invited to give themselves up to universal 
life — all to join the chorus of songs, the dances for the mul- 
titude, the Delphic courses, the Pythian games, the athletic 
and gymnastic exercises, the Grecian life — serene as its art — 
ruled by music and geometry, devoted to make of each body 
a perfect sculpture, of each soul a transparent heaven — a 
life in complete and eternal peace with nature, that chisels, 
carves, and paints itself, and submits itself to the spirit and 
to the conceptions and forces of man. 

I have not beheld the beauties of the tropics, but I have 
heard them glowingly described by those who have seen and 
admired them. I have a friend who is an insatiable and 
untiring traveler, who frequently speaks to me of Cuba, of 
Hayti, of Brazil, and, above all, of the island of Java — that 
assemblage of volcanoes. All these must be beautiful — ter- 
ribly beautiful. Our trees would appear like ladies' bouquets 
by the side of those gigantic trees, which are there in har- 
mony with the landscape. Our rivers are but bubbling 
brooks in comparison with the great waters of India and 
Peru. Our flora dwarfed and miserable compared with that 
of the tropics, overflowing with sap and perfume. I have 
figured to myself a thousand times, on reading the narratives 
of great travelers, that island of Java, with its granite founda 1 
tions — with its basaltic mountains — with its chain of volca- 
noes — its shore, covered with madrepores and polypi — sylvan 
groves, and woods overgrown with jungle — boiling rivers, 



PARTHENOPE. 297 



drained from the mountains of fire, and flowing into the im- 
mensity of the ocean — tempestuous days, whose lightnings 
are fires, whose thunders let loose from the heavens their 
electric floods — nights illuminated, not only by the stars and 
constellations, but by the great fire-flies which dart about in 
all directions like clouds of animated aerolites ; the cocoa- 
trees rising from the waters, sometimes from the waves, and 
rearing their lofty heads, crowned with fruit — the waving 
palm-trees — the bamboos at the foot of the gigantic plane- 
trees, through whose trunks flow the liquid amber — the leaves 
and the branches of this luxuriant vegetation interlacing so 
thickly as to form a perpetual shade, inhabited by green-eyed 
tigers, and monstrous bats with immense wings; the open 
country, covered with plantations of tobacco, tea, coffee, and 
of spices, which intoxicate us with their sap, their essences, 
and their exhalations, and perfume the atmosphere — the en- 
tire earth producing and devouring beings in continual and 
reckless extravagance, as if that extraordinary development 
of nature were the madness, the delirium, the frenzy of ex- 
istence. 

Beautiful it must be, most beautiful ; but, with all its fas- 
cinations, man has reduced and conquered it. How different 
from the tranquil seas whose waves wash rocky islands ; from 
the harmonious coasts which are ever hospitably open to 
the winds and waters; from the elm -trees, between whose 
graceful columns are festooned the flexible shoots of the vine, 
twining around them their soft green tendrils ; from the ar- 
tistic flora of the Mediterranean coasts, a flora of surpassing 

N g 



298 



PARTHENOPE. 



richness of color — the jasmine interlaced with the passion- 
flower; the verbena at the foot of the myrtle; in the hollow 
of the valley the olive, the pomegranate, the fig, the orange, 
and lemon trees; beside the torrent the rose-bay; on the 
mountains the sage, the thyme, the rosemary, the dwarf ap- 
ple-tree, the arnica — all with healing or restorative powers; 
over the flowers the butterflies in their gay idleness, the bee, 
with- his industry, and the sweet and gentle air, tempered by 
the sun in winter, by the breeze in summer; with the un- 
ceasing warbling of birds, with their gorgeous plumage. Hu- 
manity will always delight in this lovely and luxuriant nat- 
ure, which invigorates with its warmth, nourishes with juicy 
fruits, regales with its odors, refreshes with its zephyrs ; which 
bronzes and heals with its sunshine; which enchants with the 
changing beauty of its seas, and that rosy light over its hills, 
and the view of its horizon, and the architectural perfection 
of its mountain -chains — nature in which man lives as the 
faun in his ivy-covered grotto, and bathes as Silenus in the 
crystal of his fountains ! 

We all feel ourselves an integral part of the universe. We 
understand the near relationship which exists between nature 
and the soul. The minerals furnish the basis of our skeleton. 
Iron enters into our veins, colors and warms our blood. 
Even on beholding the human body we observe its relations 
and harmonies with the planets. This connection is still 
greater in the superior spheres of life. All animated creat- 
ures have affinities, physical, chemical, and physiological, with 
this human body, which includes them, crowns and perfects 



PARTHENOPE. 2 gg 



them. On all sides we feel ourselves united to the universe, 
and in relation also with the far-distant star, lost in the im- 
mensity of the heavens, as well as with the humble flower 
trampled beneath our feet. We are one with all beings, and 
shall we not acknowledge the closeness of the tie which binds 
us to our own species ? Shall it be more easy and agreeable 
to us to feel ourselves one with the mineral, the vegetable, 
with the inferior animals, than with the rest of humanity, on 
whose brows is the light of the Spirit ? And if we acknowl- 
edge ourselves united to other men by the fundamental iden- 
tity of nature, how can we explain war and slavery ? How 
the desire of corrupting, of enslaving, of conquering, of exter- 
minating, which causes suffering to so many human beings, is 
so detrimental and so hateful to those who are in all things 
our equals ? In this smiling land of Naples we remember its 
history. The pride of some, the tyranny engendered by that 
pride ; and of others the serfdom, the degradation, the moral 
and material misery. Do I not see before me the Gulf of 
Baiae, where Nero in his impious cruelty assassinated his 
mother ? where Caligula in his madness and folly called upon 
the moon to share his couch? and do I not also behold the 
cone of Vesuvius, where Spartacus summoned the gladiators, 
telling them that instead of turning their swords against each 
other they should bury them in the hearts of their tyrants ? 

Let us give ourselves up to the contemplation of this beau- 
tiful panorama of the Campagna and of the city. I seem to 
have it now before my eyes. We are in the last days of April. 
The green and tender leaves cover the branches. The sea 



3QO PARTHENOPE. 



and the heavens smile joyfully. Toward the east, the snow- 
crowned crests outlined against the clear azure of the sky, 
are the Apennines, sometimes vanishing in clouds and again 
appearing in the ether; before us, toward the shore, at the 
northeast, is the truncated pyramid of Vesuvius, on whose 
sides, composed of lava and metallic rocks of dark crystals, 
the light shows shades of violet, blue, and lilac, which are al- 
most magical ; near the volcano, a mass of beautiful and ver- 
dant hills, is Cape Campanella ; on the borders of the sea, 
among groves of olives and lemon-trees, of oak-trees and figs, 
of laurels and myrtles, are Castellamare and Sorrento, white 
as doves ; toward the central curve of this vast amphitheatre, 
first the solitary ruins of Pompeii, then those thickly peopled 
villages of Portici and Torre del Greco, surrounded with love- 
ly country-seats and blooming gardens extending for many 
leagues ; toward the west, Naples, among her wharves of 
commerce, where vessels are grouped in hundreds, and boats 
in thousands; and then the Riviera di Chiaja, with beautiful 
and shady promenades, wonderful statues, and marble tem- 
ples, bordered by a line of palaces, grandly picturesque with 
their flat roofs and balconies; behind these are villas, gardens, 
towns, a row of little volcanic cones forming graceful undula- 
tions ; and beyond, green hills, on whose summits are church- 
es, monasteries, castles, and all kinds of monuments, at whose 
foot are extended woods and forests on graceful slopes ; fur- 
ther to the west is the grotto of Posilippo, celebrated for the 
tomb of Virgil — a genius which reposes there as in its proper 
home ; still more westward the Cape Mesino, sung by the 



PARTHENOPE. 301 

poets, eternally beloved by artists ; the whole bathed in that 
rosy light which gives an unearthly aspect to the snows of the 
Apennines and to the smoke of Vesuvius \ and toned by that 
sea of an almost indescribable azure, studded and made more 
beautiful by those towering islands which raise their lovely 
heads to watch, to woo, to adorn the goddess of sirens, the 
divine Parthenope. 



THE END. 



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